Consultant in Adult/OP MH

Job overview

This is a whole time (10 PA) Consultant Psychiatrist post within the Acute Care Pathway in Adult Mental Health Services with on call. The post-holder will provide consultant input into the All Age Crisis Resolution & Home Treatment Team.

The Crisis and Home Treatment team receives urgent referrals from GPs, other professional referrers and referrals from patients or carers (with patient consent). The team receives about 60 – 100 urgent referrals per month, which are triaged and initially assessed as necessary by nurses. A crisis response is maintained 24 hours a day 7 days a week and from October 2026 the service will offer 24/7 open access

The Home Treatment provision operates between 8am and 8pm 7 days a week. The caseload size of active patients is usually about 20 – 30 cases.  Although not fully integrated, the team works closely with the Local Authority and Third Sector partners, ensuring the social care needs of people with mental disorder are met.

The post-holder will be available to provide senior clinical supervision and assessment and give telephone or email advice to Primary Care physicians regarding the management of patients with mental health problems in urgent or emergency situations, as appropriate. The average number of urgent or emergency referrals per month is 65.

Main duties of the job

PRINCIPAL CLINICAL DUTIES

Working as a member of the multidisciplinary team, the post holder will provide consultant clinical input as required to the triage team and crisis assessment service, including face to face patient assessment for complex urgent community cases who are adults of working age.

The clinical care of patients under these teams will be timely and tailored to the needs of patients and carers. There is also a 4-bed Crisis House (Haven House provided by MIND) which offers an alternative to admission and whilst there, people have their care reviewed and managed by the CRHT.

The consultant will be expected to have a flexible approach to respond in a timely and reasonable manner to the needs of patients and carers as well as of team members for support and advice as necessary. The post-holder will work largely through advice and supervision with direct patient contact as required; this is a district-wide service with no personal caseload but with rapid throughput of patients and a need for prompt and flexible decision making.

This more fluid style of working does not allow for easy quantification of workload. The typical CRHT caseload is about 25 people (including Crisis cases, those in Haven House, and people in receipt of Home-based Treatment.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to attached job description and person specification for further information regarding the post.

We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if there are a high amount of applications