Liaison Psychiatry Senior Clinical Practitioner

Join our West Kent Liaison Psychiatry Service as a Liaison Psychiatry Senior Practitioner at Tunbridge Wells Hospital. This dynamic role offers a fantastic opportunity to provide vital hospital-based mental health care within a fast-paced, multidisciplinary environment.

You will be responsible for urgent and routine referrals, complex assessments, and managing diverse mental health needs in a general hospital setting. A key part of the role involves teaching and supporting acute hospital colleagues to enhance their mental health understanding and promote holistic care. You will also ensure service targets and quality standards are met, utilising IT systems for documentation.

We are seeking a proactive, collaborative individual committed to quality improvement, who embodies patient-centred care, compassion, empathy, respect, and dignity. If you are passionate about making a difference in the lives of individuals experiencing mental health challenges, we encourage you to apply.

As a crucial Liaison Psychiatry team member, you will combine expert clinical practice with leadership. You will assess and respond to acute hospital referrals, adhering to CORE24 standards (1-hour triage, 4-hour full assessment). Your responsibilities include comprehensive biopsychosocial assessments for various mental health conditions. You will manage complex caseloads of clients with co-morbid physical and mental illnesses. Expert risk assessment and management, including safeguarding processes, are essential. You will also address situations where social needs outweigh mental or physical health needs, coordinating care plans.

A key aspect is providing specialist assessment and intervention for adults (18+) with co-morbid illness. You will act as an educational resource, offering training and advice to acute hospital staff and liaison psychiatry colleagues on mental health crises in all age groups. You will foster close working relationships with acute hospital teams and Kent and Medway Partnership Trust. You will provide clinical supervision for Band 6 practitioners and support their development. You will also assist in leading change processes for LPS accreditation and CORE24 service delivery.

You will lead in a specific clinical area (e.g., neurodiversity, substance misuse, dementia/delirium, self-harm). You will develop clinical audit initiatives, lead on service improvements for users and carers (increasing PREM & CREM completion), and conduct clinical inductions for new clinicians.

Come and work with us in the Garden of England where we combine exceptional professional development opportunities with a tremendous quality of life. We are Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), providing mental health, learning disability and specialist services, serving 1.8 million people in Kent and Medway, as well as specialist services for adults in Sussex and Surrey. We are rated Good overall by the CQC.

Each year we care for over 2,000 people in our hospitals and 54,000 people in the community. We are proud to employ over 3,800 people from 66 nationalities, and to serve an increasingly diverse range of communities across rural and urban areas. You will be joining friendly, passionate colleagues, rich in their diversity, who are committed to providing excellent care to our service users and their loved ones. The nature of our work attracts kindness and compassion as standard and everyone from our cleaners and porters to the chief executive and chairman are recognised as playing a vital role in providing an exemplary service.

Our strategy

Our mission is what we set out to do every day: We deliver brilliant care through brilliant people. Our vision is where we want to be in the future: To provide outstanding care and to work in partnership to deliver this in the right place, for every service user, every time.

For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Tom Clarke Job title: West Kent Service Manager Email address: tom.clarke6@nhs.net Telephone number: 07879425886.