Medical Examiner Officer - Band 6

An exciting opportunity for a substantive post for 0.8 wte (30 hours) at Pilgrim.

The role of the Medical Examiner Officer (MEO) will provide a point of contact and advice for health care professionals in relation to the Medical Examiners services . Another critical aspect will be to support and advise the relatives/carers of deceased patients. The MEO will support the integration and implementation of systems and processes relating to the Medical Examiner role and the national learning from Death Strategy. This will include the completion of regular audits to ensure compliance with local and national guidelines.

We are looking for a motivated individual with experience in the healthcare environment. The successful candidate will require excellent interpersonal and communication skills and demonstrate a high level of tact and diplomacy due to the sensitive nature of the role. The role will require a strong ability to identify and addresspractice where care issues have been identified and work across boundaries in multi-disciplinary teams. This is an exciting opportunity to make a difference for both patients and their families/carers and staff within the Trust.

What’s the hospital like?

Pilgrim Hospital is situated beautiful countryside and serves the communities in the South Lincolnshire area. It provides all major specialties and a 24-hour major accident and emergency service.

Grantham and District Hospital serves the communities of Grantham and the local area. It provides ambulatory paediatric and accident and emergency services.

Lincoln Hospital is a thriving university city and with the opening of the new medical school, It provides all major specialties and a 24-hour major accident and emergency service

If you want to make a difference and be part of something new and exciting then we would love to hear from you so, what are you waiting for?!

“Excellence in rural healthcare”, delivered by people who put patients at the heart of everything they do

One Trust, Endless opportunities

To promote and support a culture of learning and quality improvement across all aspects of patient care, safety, services and resource management within United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust
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 and coroner and registration services
To identify themes and trends and implement processes to address these to improve the care of our patients

Duties

1. Acting as an intermediary between the bereaved and clinicians to establish and resolve any concerns relating to a patient’s death
2. Communicating with internal and external stakeholders
3. Managing and provide expert advice on the Trust’s approach in dealing with issues that are of a sensitive, contentious or of a political nature.
4. Provide, receive and interpret sensitive information to staff, families and carers
5. Supporting people who may be distressed, hostile and/or confrontational and where possible to defuse volatile situations, seeking to negotiate and acceptable way forward to deal with concerns raised
6. Developing mechanisms for communicating and sharing improvements in services and care
7. Creating and updating databases
8. Collaborating as required with relevant stakeholders in promoting a customer focussed culture, recognising and sharing success locally and regionally
9. Working with medical examiners to aid them in their responsibility for overseeing the death certification process for all deceased patients in the organisation
10. Establishing the circumstances of individual patient deaths by performing a preliminary review of medical records to identify clinical and circumstantial information, sourcing additional details where required, for scrutiny by the medical examiner
11. Assisting in highlighting cases for assessment through case note reviews, Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP), Clinical Governance teams and the Learning Disability Review Teams (LeDeR)
12. Referring patients to the coroner for further investigation on approval by the medical examiner
13. Identifying relatives’ concerns and escalating them appropriately
14. Managing and implementing multiple priorities at any one time to manage workload effectively and to meet deadlines.
15. Maintaining 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
16. Advising, supporting and training colleagues within the team and across the Trust, in large and small groups and individually, on relevant areas as required
17. Supporting Serious Incident and incident investigations
18. Contributing to and reviewing departmental policies and procedures to reflect best practice in the delivery of a medical examiner system
19. Responsible for the accurate source and collation of both qualitative and quantitative data and information, triangulating multiple data sources and work streams to produce clear reporting that provides assurance to the Trust and external agencies
20. Coordinates and participates in audits as required
21. Participating in recruitment, supervision, training and development of staff as required, including annual performance reviews
22. Meeting with clinicians and attending meetings as required
23. Organising and attending relevant meetings as requested
24. Contributing to the development of a culture of continuous improvement, challenging orthodoxy and the established way of doing things, promoting evidence based approach where positive change is more welcomed than resisted
25. Maintaining and developing own knowledge by attending further training, briefings, conferences as required, and mandatory training
26. This job description is intended as a basic guide to the scope and responsibilities of the post and is not exhaustive. It will be subject to regular review and amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.

27. Reviewing deaths that occur in the community in addition to the acute Trusts deaths.