Mental Health Practitioner

Job overview

Are you passionate about patients receiving the best care? Are you looking for a specialist career pathway? Do you want to be influential in leading and developing a new model for the future? Then you may be the person we are looking for to be involved in shaping our services.

We are currently looking to recruit a keen, enthusiastic and highly motivated Mental Health Practitioner (RMNS, Occupational Therapists, or social workers) to join our Adult Community Eating Disorder Service, based within the grounds of Addenbrookes Hospital, in the vibrant University City of Cambridge.

It is a very exciting time to join our services, with plans in place to expand and develop our excellent service into a new model for providing care in the community.

Main duties of the job

As a key member of our team you, will play a vital role in developing services including - MANTRA, providing 1 to 1 interventions and group work along with the medical monitoring pathways. Previous experience in a leadership position is considered desirable for this post and you will be required to work collaboratively and independently within our service.

Developing and improving clinical care form the key elements of this post and you will be required to give expert advice and support to patients, their families/carers, the multidisciplinary team and other healthcare professionals. Working together with Matron, Consultants and Therapists you will help develop and shape the service. In return for your commitment and enthusiasm, working within the unique Adult eating Disorders Team will give you the opportunity to practice a full range of core leadership and MDT team skills.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.

• To be responsible for the assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of evidence-based treatments for eating disorders including health promotion, physical monitoring and focus on wellbeing and safe maintenance for severe and enduring eating disorders.
• To participate in the setting of quality standards, including the monitoring and reviewing in line with current clinical guidance practice and policy. Utilising the data available such as learning from incidences and complaints.
• To be responsible for the promotion of carer and service user involvement within the service and for its provision. To encourage recovery, discovery and independence, taking into account risk assessment and management.
• To be responsible for establishing therapeutic relationships with service users and the implementation of evidence based therapeutic interventions with appropriate boundaries in accordance with Nursing and Midwifery Councils professional code of conduct.
• To lead on the provision of social/therapeutic activities for service users.
• To be responsible for the safe custody and administration of medicines in accordance with all medicine policies and ensure compliance is maintained.
• To ensure that a high standard of multi-disciplinary care planning is in place and to lead the nursing contribution to this process.
• To be competent and confident in undertaking medical monitoring for eating disorder patients in line with Kings College guidelines.
• To respect and value the different therapeutic approaches within the multi-disciplinary team but ensure that the agreed philosophy approach is adopted and followed.
• To work closely with the multi-disciplinary team and other agencies to support the facilitation of early discharges.
• To demonstrate care and compassion in your work and support others in the team to achieve this.
• To be responsible for maintaining and conducting oneself in a professional manner towards service users, carers, colleagues, primary care and other agencies, at all times.
• To work collaboratively with other Trust services and external agencies, in order to provide seamless care for our service users.
• To ensure that they contribute and work towards the service/organisational aims.

Please note for this role you will be required to travel independently around the county meeting strict time deadlines. You will need to hold a full UK driving licence* and have use of a vehicle. You cannot use public transport for this role as this is not a reliable form of transport and will not allow you to meet service needs. Please confirm in your application that you meet the specified criteria.

*DVLA have a number of reciprocal arrangements with overseas countries, for further information please visit the DVLA website