Consultant Psychiatrist in Adult Mental Health (Darlington Hub) x2

Job summary

There is a need for two full time Consultant working in the Community Mental health Team covering the area of Darlington (population 92,363), part of the South Durham Locality.

In total there are 15 Adult Mental Health Consultant posts across the locality supported by medical staff from the rotation scheme in psychiatry, GP Registrars, F2 Doctors and Speciality Doctors. The team is based at West Park hospital, Darlington where the acute inpatient unit is also located adjacently. There is no in-patient commitment. The Team is able to obtain expert advice from Trust-wide specialist services which include an ADHD service; the Autism Spectrum Assessment Team and the Eating Disorder service. The Team manages adults with secondary mental health needs in Darlington. The post holder will need to develop effective working relationships with personnel in these services. Patients are referred to the service directly from General Practitioners and other primary care mental health services, for example the IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) service. The post-holder will need to develop effective working relationships with members of the Crisis Team and In-patient team by closely liaising with these services when patients are referred to the crisis team / needing alternative to hospital beds will be managed by the crisis team and the patients who need to be in hospital will be managed by the inpatient team.

Main duties of the job

The Consultant will be expected to provide committed, proactive and responsive clinical leadership working with other staff to provide an assessment and treatment service for those individuals suffering with Chronic enduring mental illness in the Darlington Locality. Joint medical assessments are arranged for complex cases (one morning per week for each of the five community Consultants. Two patients will be seen each morning). Our Crisis Team manages access to in-patient services. The post-holder will need to develop effective working relationships with members of the Crisis Team and In-patient Team by closely liaising with these services when patients are referred to the crisis team / needing alternative to hospital beds will be managed by the crisis team and the patients who need to be in hospital will be managed by the inpatient team. The Trust provides specialist services for substance misuse problems. Alcohol services are commissioned separately. The post holder will be expected to provide appropriate supervision to junior medical staff and non-medical prescribers within the team. The post holder will be expected to have familiarity with all important, relevant legislation affecting the Adult Mental Health population. Daytime on call once per week 9am-5pm for Mental Health Act assessments. On these days, routine patient work is kept to a minimum, Mental Health Act work is generally carried out in the afternoon.

About us

We are one of the largest specialist mental health and learning disabilities trusts in the country, with an annual income of £320m and a workforce of some 6,700 staff operating from around 100 sites in Durham, Teesside, North Yorkshire and York and Selby. We provide a range inpatient and community services to 2m people and also provide additional specialist services to other parts of Northern England.

We are a multi-award winning trust and are included within the Health Service Journals Best 100 Places to Work. The trust take a positive and proactive approach to support staff in their personal development and has embedded the Talent Management approach within the Trust, with the vision of helping people to be as good as they can be, helping TEWV to do things better.