Speciality Doctor in Mental Health Services for Older People

Job summary

Durham & Tees Valley Mental Health Services for Older People (MHSOP) provides a comprehensive mental health service to older people living in the region and works in partnership with acute and community health services provided by 3 acute Trusts.

This is a full-time Specialty Doctor post providing clinical and medical input to a Community Mental Health Services for Older Peoples team in Northwest County Durham. The post-holder will work into a well-established community team covering the Bishop Auckland & Dales sector, and will be based at Auckland Park Hospital in Bishop Auckland.

The post holder will provide psychiatric input to Bishop Auckland & Dales CMHT, working alongside a consultant psychiatrist. The team covers a population of 31,360 people over the age of 65.

The team provides a dementia assessment, diagnostic and treatment service as well as mental health services to older people with mental health problems and frailty-related complexities. We also accept referrals for young onset dementia patients. The team has good administrative support and co-located social workers.

Main duties of the job

The expectation is that the post holder will attend daily huddles to support multi-disciplinary working and provide medical input and leadership for the team under supervision of the Consultant psychiatrist, as well as providing supervision and advice to non-medical prescribers.

Clinical contact each week will include complex initial assessments, dementia diagnostic appointments, and patient review appointments. The mix will be determined by the current demands of the team, with the expectation that there will be approximately fifteen to twenty patient appointments each week, the majority of which will be review or diagnostic appointments.

The vast majority of initial assessments for new referrals are seen by nursing colleagues but on occasion for more complex referrals or specific medication queries, for example, the post-holder may carry out the initial assessment. This will be the case for only small numbers of patients, around 1-2 per week. The post holder would not tend to hold a personal caseload and the vast majority of patients are allocated to other colleagues as care coordinator or lead professional.

About us

We are the Mental Health and Learning Disability NHS Trust for County Durham and Darlington, Teesside, North Yorkshire, York and Selby.+

From education and prevention, to crisis and specialist care our talented and compassionate teams work in partnership with our patients, communities and partners to help the people of our region feel safe, understood, believed in and cared for.

We nurture the recovery journey of anyone in need of our help. In Our Trust, everyone has a say in how they are supported and treated because we listen to every person in our care until they feel understood. Our patients, their families and carers work together with us towards better mental health.

We're committed to new thinking that improves the wellbeing of our region. We connect with our communities and partners to get mental health care right, in areas that really need it.

We won't rest until everyone in our region has the mental health care they need, to lead their best possible life.

Psychiatrists are essential contributors to the majority of our mental health teams. Service users expect and are justified to expect collaborative relationships with dedicated psychiatrists who work consistently as part of effective services. The Medical Directorate and Medical Development Team are striving to improve medical workforce recruitment and retention in a variety of ways and the cornerstone of these efforts is The TEWV Charter for the Medical Workforce. (Please see attached Supporting Document).