Mental Health Liaison Nurse

Job overview

The role of the mental health liaison nurse (also known as Psychiatric Liaison Nurses or PLNs) will be to complete biopsychosocial assessments of adults requiring acute mental health care in St Thomas' Hospital, formulating robust and holistic risk management and care plans to support discharge to appropriate community or inpatient services.

Main duties of the job

Working closely with the Psychiatric Nurse in Charge (NIC) you will be able to gain experience within not only acute assessments of patient’s within the busiest psychiatric liaison service within SLAM, but also work with one of the most diverse and changing patient populations in the trust.

The MHLT covers both the Emergency Department (ED) and the inpatient medical/ surgical wards and the successful applicants would be expected to be be able to work within either work stream. The PLN's also work closely with our Crisis Assessment Unit (C AU) to provide a further clinically therapeutic environment for assessment and your clinical judgement and risk assessment skills will contribute to both the use and development of this service along side the ED.

The post holder will work alongside acute hospital colleagues and other partner agencies to develop plans of care alongside the patient and their carers, relatives or friends. This also includes opportunities to work within frequent attenders frameworks and pan London initiatives.

We offer an extensive supernumerary induction program (based on experience) to ensure that you are going to be prepared to be working in this busy environment alongside our GSTT counterparts. Our highly specialist team will also support and develop your established skills, along side PLAN recommendations, to ensure that we support your potential moving forward within this role and beyond.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

for a full list of duties; see attached job description

Working autonomously within the parameters of the role leading and supporting junior staff and wider care team to implement the delivery of quality nursing care, contributing to the physical, psychological, social, recreational and spiritual care in a recovery-focused way through therapeutic engagement and activities, and taking steps to address any issues that arise.

Co-ordinating and evaluating collaborative patient centred care; getting feedback and improving plans with the multi-disciplinary team(MDT).

Providing accurate information about care in an accessible format to patients and their relatives /carers.

Liaising and working positively with members of the multi-disciplinary team and partner organisations.

Leading and supporting/teaching junior staff on risk assessment and risk management that involves making decisions based on knowledge of the research evidence, knowledge of the individual service user and their social context, knowledge of the service user’s own experience and clinical judgment.

Recognising and valuing service users as individuals, acknowledging the importance of maintaining the service user’s respect and dignity at all times and ensure that the care provided respects equality and diversity.

Implementing the principles of ‘recovery’: encouraging and supporting service users to engage with healthy lifestyles, facilitating psychosocial activities and other activities of their interest. Where appropriate contributing to psychological interventions.

Advocating for service users’ needs and rights within Trust policy. Encouraging and empowering service users to have an optimum level of responsibility for their individual programme of care.