Older Adult Specialist Practitioner - Psychiatric Liaison Service

Job overview

Are you an experienced mental health professional passionate about improving outcomes for older adults in acute hospital settings?

The Psychiatric Liaison Service (PLS) is looking for a skilled Older Adult Specialist Practitioner to join our team supporting patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Wycombe General Hospital.

You will work autonomously to complete comprehensive psychosocial and risk assessments, deliver evidence-based interventions, and collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams across health and social care. The role also includes providing consultation, education and support to acute hospital staff to enhance understanding and management of psychiatric presentations in older adults.

This is an  opportunity to combine advanced clinical practice, liaison working and clinical leadership. You will contribute to service improvement, support staff development and help shape high-quality psychiatric liaison provision across Buckinghamshire.

Main duties of the job

• Providing expertise in first contact care and immediate management, consistent with published NICE and RCPsych guidance, for patients under the care of the Buckinghamshire Health Care Trust at the Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe General Hospital sites.
• Work independently to carry out skilled and comprehensive psychosocial assessments for older adults (and adults of working age, if required). To use agreed assessment tools to conduct comprehensive assessments – including risk.
• Use advanced level skills to provide safe, high quality, evidence-based care for patients presenting to Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Wycombe General Hospital in need of urgent psychiatric care.Make appropriate referrals to other services in Oxford Health, other statutory and non-statutory agencies.
• Work in collaboration with GPs and other health and social care colleagues and refer patients onward as determined by their clinical and social needs.
• To communicate highly sensitive, complex and confidential information to patients, relatives, carers and multidisciplinary and multi-agency teams.
• Effectively manage the presenting needs of patients referred to the service. This can include providing time-limited interventions involving more than one clinical area or model of practice.
• Assess and manage risk whilst acting as a lead to advise on the management or risk within BHT for older adult mental health patient

Please see full Job description and Person Spec for more details.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.

The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview, and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.

We are aware that some candidates may choose to use AI tools to support their application. We kindly remind applicants that submissions should remain an honest and accurate representation of their experience and must take care to ensure the use of AI tools does not generate an application that does not accurately reflect their knowledge, skills and values.

The ability to travel independently between sites within the Trust is essential for this role.