Senior Clinical Practitioner

Job overview
Join our West Kent Liaison Psychiatry Service as a Senior Liaison Psychiatry Practitioner at Maidstone 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

Working for our organisation
We are the Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust. We care for the mental health and wellbeing of people across Kent and Medway. Our teams support adults with a wide range of mental health needs. Because we cover the whole county and both hospital and community settings, we can make care more joined up and easier to access for the 1.8 million people of Kent and Medway. Rated 'Good' by the CQC, we care for over 2,000 people in our hospitals and 54,000 in the community each year.
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. And 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 doing well together.
Take a look at our Community Nursing Video
Take a look at our Occupational Therapist Video

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description for the full details on the responsibilities and person specification
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.

Person specification

Qualifications and Training

Essential criteria

• Qualifications andRegistered Mental Health Nurse, Occupational therapist and/or relevant clinical qualification. Training
• Post-registration therapy qualification or wish and ability to work towards this
• Educated or working towards Masters degree level via specialist modules

Desirable criteria

• Occupational therapist with post registration experience of working in mental health
• Undertaken practice supervisor

Experience

Essential criteria

• Previous experience at senior nurse (band 6 or above)
• Working individually with people using a CBT or similar therapeutic approach
• Working in the community with people with mental health problems

Knowledge and Skills

Essential criteria

• Sound knowledge of mental health problems particularly the impact of physical and mental illness on wellbeing
• Ability to develop and provide training packages
• Knowledge of relevant legislation

Additional requirement

Essential criteria

• Ability to travel to different sites across the Trust in a timely manner
• Computer literate

Important Information:
In cases where we receive a high volume of applications for a post, it may be necessary to bring the closing date forward. Please submit your completed application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
Due to the high volume of applications received, it is not possible to respond individually to your application. Should you not hear from us within six weeks of the vacancy closing, please assume that your application has not been successful.

Probation Period. New employees external to the trust are subject to a six-month probationary period.
To deliver an effective service it is essential in some of our roles that you are able to travel between work bases in a timely manner.
Production of false or forged documents/qualifications in order to obtain employment is a criminal offence and will be reported to the Police.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check.
Certain roles are subject to criminal record checks called Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks. Therefore, you will be required to submit a completed Disclosure form to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust are signed up to NHS England's Sexual Safety in Health Care Organisational Charter
The trust takes a systematic zero-tolerance approach to tackle any unwanted, inappropriate and/or harmful sexual behaviours within the workplace and in our care provision. We are committed to sexual safety which encompasses prevention, support and decisive action against perpetrators. We are committed to keeping you and our patients safe.

Use of AI when writing job applications
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