Medical Examiner Officer - London, United Kingdom - Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Verified Company

London, United Kingdom

1 week ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

To support Medical Examiners in their role in scrutinising the circumstances and causes of death.

To be a point of contact and source of advice for relatives of deceased patients, healthcare professionals, HM Coroner and the registration services.

The Medical Examiner function is currently in the non-statutory phase of implementation.

The service currently scrutinises the deaths of all adult and paediatric patients at the Trust and is expanding further to scrutinise all non-acute deaths occurring in the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark.

This will result in a significant increase in casework for the Medical Examiner Office, hence the move to recruit additional Medical Examiner Officer capacity.

The service is expected to become statutory in April 2024, when all non-coronial deaths will have to be scrutinised by a Medical Examiner before death registration can take place.

You will be based primarily at the Medical Examiner Office located at St Thomas' Hospital, working alongside the Duty ME for that day, the Lead MEO and the existing team of Bereavement Administrators.

There may be a requirement for occasional cross-site working with travel between the Guy's and St Thomas' sites (and any satellite inpatient units where the occasional need arises).

As a full time role, the usual start time will be 08:00 hours (Monday to Friday) but we can consider slight changes to working hours where required.

You will work as a key member of a small but highly specialised and dedicated team. The atmosphere is friendly and supportive.

This is an excellent opportunity to have daily contact with a wide range of medical specialties and further your clinical knowledge.

The work we do is interesting, varied and gives a lot of job satisfaction.

Every day, you will have the opportunity to help improve the care we provide and to directly support the relatives of deceased patients.

Please see attached job description and person specification for full information.

To act as an intermediary between the bereaved and clinicians to establish and resolve any concerns relating to a patient's death.

Work with Medical Examiners to aid them in their responsibility for overseeing the death certification process for all deceased patients in the organisation.

To establish the circumstances of individual inpatient deaths by performing a preliminary review of medical records to identify relevant clinical and circumstantial information, sourcing additional details where required, for scrutiny by the Medical Examiner.

To assist in highlighting cases for assessment by the Structured Judgement Review team (SJR), Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP), Clinical Governance teams and the Learning Disability Review Teams (LeDeR).

To perform a preliminary review of all non-acute deaths referred to the Medical Examiner Office.

Identifying relevant clinical and circumstantial information, liaising with primary care colleagues and general practitioners to source additional information where required, to enable scrutiny by the Medical Examiner.

To discuss cases with patients' next of kin/representatives, explaining causes of death and medical terminology to them, where appropriate commensurate with your level of clinical knowledge.

To refer patients to H.M Coroner for further investigation on approval by the Medical Examiner.

Maintain an awareness of the diverse needs of users of the medical examiner system to ensure equality to any particular group defined by sex, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.