Band 6 Older Adult Hospital Liaison Practitioner - Swindon

The Mental Health Liaison Team provides a comprehensive service to patients/service users, carers and clinical colleagues based within the The Great Western Hospital.

The Team is made up of Specialist Practitioners who are skilled in assessing the mental health needs of people being treated for physical health problems and symptoms.

The role involves:

Offering an assessment service to older adults usually aged over 65 years old, although this is not definitive as will be specific to the patients individual needs, with a range of undifferentiated mental health and psychological problems, and psychiatric illnesses, including dementia.

Utilising physical health knowledge in order to support formulation and treatment.

Providing a mental health consultation liaison and advice service.

Assisting and supporting general hospital colleagues in making decisions about treatment and care in complex situations.

Providing formal and informal education and clinical supervision to registered and unregistered staff.

Representing mental health services within the General Hospital.

Providing a communication structure between the general hospital, secondary mental health services, primary care and non-statutory services, as a means of ensuring the highest possible standards of patient care.

Main duties of the job

Liaison and Consultation

o Be responsible for the full assessment of care needs of patients presenting with a range of undifferentiated mental health and psychological problems. As a result of this assessment, you will be responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of programmes of care, without direct supervision.

o Provide a comprehensive consultation-liaison service to clinical teams, assisting them to formulate appropriate plans of care and make decisions in cases where patients may be exhibiting complex needs and/or challenging behaviours.

o Initiate and participate in the teaching and educational programmes of all grades of nursing and non-nursing staff. You will also provide teaching and develop learning opportunities for pre and post-registration nursing students.

o When appropriate, maintain a small caseload of patients, providing a broad range of treatments and clinical interventions, as appropriate to the individual's needs.

o Be responsible for participating in specific clinical projects and undertake all the necessary work to complete these, including facilitating meetings, liaising and/or negotiating with other staff.

o Participate fully in appropriate quality assurance initiatives, with the emphasis on developing patient/service user-focused services.

o Promote a positive attitude and encourage a supportive culture in relation to mental health and psychiatric illness across the general hospital.

We are the lead provider of healthcare for people with serious mental illness, learning disabilities and autism across Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES), Swindon and Wiltshire, and Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

We aim to provideHigh Quality, Compassionate Careeverywhere, every day. This means our services will be safe, clinically effective and provide a positive all round experience for our patients, families and carers. And we believe passionately in treating everyone with kindness, respect and empathy.

Key to this is providing a supportive and safe environment for our 4,000 staff where we all feel welcome and able to do the best we can for those we support. Our staff and teams work incredibly hard delivering services across more than 90 locations, covering 2,200miles, to more than 1.8million people.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.