Consultant psychiatrist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce.

Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a dedicated and experienced Consultant Psychiatrist to join our inpatient team on Austen Ward, located at Hollins Park Hospital in Warrington. Austen Ward is a 17-bed, all-male general adult inpatient unit, supported by a team of up to three junior doctors. The successful candidate will take on clinical supervision responsibilities for these trainees, contributing to their development and the delivery of high quality care.

This post has become available following the retirement of the previous Consultant, who served the Trust with distinction for over 20 years. At Mersey Care, we are passionate about mental health, recovery, and wellbeing. We are committed to delivering the highest standards of care and placing quality and compassion at the heart of everything we do. We are proud to support and empower our senior clinicians to lead innovation and drive change.

This role offers exciting opportunities to shape clinical practice, contribute to service development, and play a key role in enhancing patient outcomes. Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities. At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient.

We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

• Consultant psychiatrist responsibility for all patients on Austen ward.
• Carry out comprehensive psychiatric assessments and provide treatment for inpatients.
• Support staff to manage psychiatric emergencies.
• Conduct patient reviews and lead multidisciplinary ward reviews, CPA reviews and multi-professional meetings.
• Serve as the Responsible Clinician (RC) for the purposes of the Mental Health Act 1983 (amended 2007) and carry out duties in accordance with the code of practice.
• Provide verbal and written evidence to Mental Health Review Tribunals and Hospital Manager’s hearings.
• Carry out comprehensive Risk Assessments and participate in Trust’s risk management processes such as Health Risk Assessment and Management and Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangement Meetings.
• Provide medical leadership to the team.
• Liaise with families/carers.
• Maintain effective communication with other services.
• Provide clinical/educational supervision to junior colleagues.
• Be part of the daily consultant on‑call rota for Mid Mersey. Availability supplement is 1% – Band B low frequency, low intensity.
• When on‑call, cancel routine work during normal working hours to prioritise…