Medical Examiner

**Working Part time**: 1 session per week (4hours)

Medical examiners are senior medical doctors who are contracted for a number of sessions a week to undertake medical examiner duties outside of their usual clinical duties. They are trained in the legal and clinical elements of death certification processes.

Reporting directly to the Trust’s Medical Director and working under delegation from the Regional Medical Examiner, you will work with the Trust to:
Strengthen safeguards for the public by providing robust, systematic and independent scrutiny of all deaths not referred directly to the Coroner.

Improve the quality of death certification, providing advice based on a review of relevant health records.

Avoid unnecessary distress for the bereaved by answering questions about the care given or certified cause of death, managing the Bereavement Services

Act as the point of contact for healthcare professionals, coroner and registration services.

Additionally, you will raise any issues concerning the care of the dying patient within the Trust’s existing governance framework. This will require a combination of skills and knowledge, compassion, sensitivity and a commitment to engage with bereaved families.

You will be supported by the Medical Examiners Officers and this team will develop this new service within the Countess of Chester NHS Trust in keeping with the National requirements. The MES will link in with the bereavement team, the coroner's team and the governance team to provide assurance around the cause of death, care patients receive, and concerns relatives raise. It is expected that support from the Regional Medical Examiner would enable the service development is in keeping with National services.

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides services to West Cheshire and to Welsh patients covered by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. The Trust works collaboratively within the wider Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership. Its services are provided from three locations:
**The Countess of Chester Hospital**: providing 438 general and acute beds

**Ellesmere Port Hospital**: providing 56 beds as a rehabilitation, intermediate and outpatient facility

**Tarporley War Memorial Hospital**: a base for community services which serve the local rural population.

The Trust employs over 6258 staff (headcount) which includes temporary bank staff and provides acute emergency and elective services, primary care direct access services and obstetric services to a population of approximately 407,000. This includes 357,000 residents in Chester and West Cheshire which includes Ellesmere Port and Neston as well as the Deeside area of Flintshire which has a population of approximately 50,000.

The Trust is a busy district general hospital and in 2022/2023, there were more than 503,342 patient attendances (inpatient, outpatient and diagnostic) ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to major cancer surgery. This is an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to the previous year when there were 494,387 patient attendances.

See Job Description for further details.

Recruitment selection processes are based on competence (see Person specification) and values.

You are encouraged to enrol for the DBS Update Service. A small annual fee of £13 per year applies.

New entrants to the NHS will commence on the minimum of the scale stated above.