About this role
Job summary
Join our NorthKent Liaison Psychiatry Service as a Senior Liaison Psychiatry Practitioner at Medway Maritime Hospital. This dynamic role offers a fantastic opportunity to provide vital hospital-based mental health care within a fast-paced, multidisciplinary environment.
You'll be responsible for urgent and routine referrals, complex assessments, and managing diverse mental health needs in a general hospital setting. A key part of the role involves teaching and supporting acute hospital colleagues to enhance their mental health understanding and promote holistic care. You'll also ensure service targets and quality standards are met, utilising IT systems for documentation.
We're seeking a proactive, collaborative individual committed to quality improvement, who embodies patient-centred care, compassion, empathy, respect, and dignity. If you're passionate about making a difference in the lives of individuals experiencing mental health challenges, we encourage you to apply.
Main duties of the job
As a crucial Liaison Psychiatry team member, you'll combine expert clinical practice with leadership. You'll assess and respond to acute hospital referrals, adhering to CORE24 standards (1-hour triage, 4-hour full assessment). Your responsibilities include comprehensive biopsychosocial assessments for various mental health conditions. You'll manage complex caseloads of clients with co-morbid physical and mental illnesses. Expert risk assessment and management, including safeguarding processes, are essential. You'll also address situations where social needs outweigh mental or physical health needs, coordinating care plans. A key aspect is providing specialist assessment and intervention for adults (18+) with co-morbid illness. You'll act as an educational resource, offering training, and advice to acute hospital staff and liaison psychiatry colleagues on mental health crises in all age groups You'll foster close working relationships with acute hospital teams and Kent and Medway Partnership Trust. You'll provide clinical supervision for Band 6 practitioners and support their development. You'll also assist in leading change processes for LPS accreditation and CORE24 service delivery You'll lead in a specific clinical area (e.g., neurodiversity, substance misuse, dementia/delirium, self-harm) You'll develop clinical audit initiatives, lead on service improvements for users and carers (increasing PREM & CREM completion), and conduct clinical inductions for new clinicians
About us
We are Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust. We care for the mental health and wellbeing of people across Kent and Medway and are rated 'Good' by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Our teams support children, young people and adults with a wide range of mental health needs. We also provide specialist services, including all-age eating disorder services and neurodevelopmental assessments for children and young people, such as autism and ADHD.
Because we work across the whole county and across hospital and community settings, we can make care more joined up and easier to access for the people we serve.
Our vision is simple: we are here to help communities not just live with mental illness, but live well. It's why we're passionate about working with communities to make mental health care better for everyone. Everything we do is guided by our values: caring, inclusive, curious and confident.
Join us if you share our passion for better mental health care and want to be part of a team that's working well together.
We are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.
Job description Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description for the full details on the responsibilities and person specification.
Person Specification
Experince Essential
Previous experience at senior nurse (band 6 or above) of one year and above Experience of identifying, assessing and managing clinical risk
Training, Qualifications and Registration Essential
Registered Mental Health Nurse, Occupational therapist and/or relevant clinical qualification Post-registration therapy qualification or wish and ability to work towards this
Knowledge and Skills Essential
Ability to develop and provide training packages Ability to develop strong therapeutic alliance and engage individuals in treatment Computer literate Ability to work under own initiative Ability to liaise effectively with others
Disclosure and Barring Service Check This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details Employer name Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust
Address Medway Maritime Hospital
Windmill Road
Gillingham
ME7 5NY
United Kingdom
Employer's website https://www.kentmedwaymentalhealth.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)