Medical Examiner Officer

Job overview

The Medical Examiner Officer is an exciting role which supports the Medical Examiner service. As well as a sound knowledge of processes following a patient’s death, you will require excellent customer service, communication and organisational skills. The work involves liaising with doctors and dealing with people at an extremely difficult time in their lives and you must be able to complete the necessary tasks whilst acting in a caring and compassionate manner.

The Medical Examiner system has been introduced across England and Wales to provide greater scrutiny of deaths. Medical Examiners are senior medical doctors who are contracted to undertake medical examiner duties, outside of their usual clinical duties. They are trained in the legal and clinical elements of death certification processes.

The purpose of the Medical Examiner process is to examine deaths to:

• agree the proposed cause of death with doctors and improve the overall accuracy of the medical certificate cause of death
• discuss the cause of death with the next of kin and establish if they have any concerns with care that could have impacted/led to death
• act as a medical advice resource for the local coroner
• inform the selection of cases for further review under local mortality arrangements and contributing to other clinical governance procedures.

This is a challenging, but rewarding post, within a supportive team, focused on improving the experience of bereaved families.

Main duties of the job

To support medical examiners in their role of scrutinising the circumstances and causes of death for all deaths within South Warwickshire.  To be a point of contact and source of advice for relatives of deceased patients, healthcare professionals, coroner and registration services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To act as an intermediary between the bereaved and clinicians to establish and resolve any concerns relating to a patient’s death. Work with medical examiners to aid them in their responsibility for overseeing the death certification process for all deceased patients in the organisation

To organise and manage the rota for the Medical Examiners to ensure daily cover. To coordinate periodic meetings, e.g. quarterly Medical Examiner meetings, to share good practice, provide peer review, feedback and highlight any issues relating to process.

To establish the circumstances of individual patient deaths by performing a preliminary review of medical records to identify clinical and circumstantial information, sourcing additional details where required, for scrutiny by the medical examiner.

To check whether any concerns/complaints have been raised by the patient, bereaved family, carers or staff, and whether any clinical incidents or adverse events occurred during the admission.

To assist in highlighting cases for assessment by the Structured Judgement Review team (SJR), Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP), Clinical Governance teams and the Learning Disability Review Teams (LeDeR).

To refer patients to the coroner for further investigation on approval by the Medical Examiner

Maintain an awareness of the diverse needs of users of the medical examiner system to ensure equality to any particular group defined by sex, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.

Full compliance with secure handling of patient identifiable data is essential

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Educated to Batchelor’s degree level, or evidence of study/equivalent practical experience at an advanced level; this might include nursing and/or other clinical experience.

To have qualifications/skills in day-to-day operational/process management of a customer-facing service where users may have unpredictable and emotionally charged needs.

Highly evolved empathetic and self-awareness skills to deal with bereaved families who may have barriers to understanding information due to their grief or disability.

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

To have an understanding of medical terminology that enables informed discussions about causes/circumstances of death with bereaved families, clinicians, coroner and registration service staff.

Knowledge of the statutory process around death certification legal frameworks and how the medical examiner system aligns with other related organisations and NHS initiatives.

The ability to work in a highly pressurised, unpredictable environment where bereavement care is central to the service delivery.

Specialist knowledge of various faith groups’ funeral wishes/practices to enable respectful compliance with tight and specific timescales and procedures.

Computer literate to use multiple IT software for recording personal identifiable data and producing statistical information for the National Medical Examiner’s office and Public Health surveillance.

Be able to juggle conflicting demands, prioritise tasks and deal with queries as they arise.

Identify relatives’ concerns and escalate them appropriately.

Full compliance with secure handling of patient identifiable data is essential.

Contribute to and review departmental policies and procedures to reflect best practice in the delivery of a medical examiner system.

Communications and Working Relationships:

The post holder will be required to communicate with bereaved relatives and the following:

Internal

• Hospital doctors
• Medical Examiners
• PALS / Bereavement Officers
• Service managers, nurses, clinical governance leads, infection control and mortuary staff.

External

• HM Coroner and officers
• Spiritual/Faith community leads
• Registrars of births and deaths
• GPs and practice staff
• Bereaved relatives, carers and executors/solicitors.
• Funeral Directors
• National Medical Examiner
• Regional leads for ME syste