General Adult Consultant Psychiatrist - Patient Flow Lead

We have an exciting opportunity for a General Adult Consultant Psychiatrist to join Sussex Partnership as a Patient Flow Lead. This is a newly developed post, so the successful post holder will have the chance to develop the role. It will be for a 12-month fixed term period, with the aim of improving the efficiency of our acute/urgent care services.

You will work with the inpatient and community teams across the Trust, in particular the urgent care pathway. You will also work with the Acute partner Trusts in Sussex when patients awaiting admission are in acute hospitals.

The successful post holder will work with the wider operational and transformation teams on building sustainable changes to the urgent care pathway and acute pathway from their experience prior and within this role.

You will not carry an active caseload or act as care-coordinator/lead practitioner; however, you may be asked to provide second opinions on specific patients where needed. You will also be expected to provide medical leadership in the development of the team and Trust-wide acute/urgent care pathway services, in line with the Care Delivery Service (CDS) and Trust goals, in order to provide high quality mental health care for patients.

You will be part of the existing Trust patient flow team and the Adult Services Operational Leadership team. All Trust patients requiring inpatient admission are referred to the patient flow team. The team triages and reviews these referrals; it also has oversight over the Trust bed state and planned discharges to enable identification of suitable inpatient beds for those waiting admission.

You will also be expected to participate in local leadership meetings and work with CDS operational leads on service development and the improvement of quality of services for the Trust acute/urgent care pathway.

At Sussex Partnership we are committed to providing opportunities for flexible working. If you would like to work differently or different hours to as advertised, please get in touch to discuss this in more detail.

To find out more about what we offer please take a look at our careers portal: https://careers.sussexpartnership.nhs.uk/

If you haven’t thought about living in Sussex before then you should consider the following:

• Journey from the coast to the countryside in minutes
• Enjoy a lifestyle where there are renowned cycle routes and picturesque walks, including the famous South Downs Way in the South Downs National Park!
• Embrace taking time to discover all the miles of scenic coastline
• Easy access to airports - Gatwick and Heathrow are both within 90 minutes of the county, providing links to Europe and beyond
• London is within easy reach via local and national bus routes and national mainline stations

The Job Description has been approved by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the main responsibilities are as follows:

• Work closely with the patient flow team to review requests for admission across the Trust.
• Work with adult inpatient teams to identify those who can be discharged (this would include offering constructive challenge to inpatient teams where needed).
• Although you will not be expected to hold a case-load of your own, or to provide Responsible Clinician cover to specific patients (except as part of expected cover duties whilst on-call), you may be asked to review specific patients on a one-off basis where there would be benefit from a second opinion on management (e.g. complex in-patients with a long length of stay).
• Working with the patient flow team and CDS leads to review pathways for admission/discharge to ensure they are as clear and efficient as possible.
• Contribute to the clinical leadership of the team.

We would love to hear from you if you want to find out more about this exciting opportunity. Please see our contact details below.