Medical Examiner

**Working hours**: 3 sessions per week

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 consists of a 600 bedded large District General Hospital, which provides its services on the Countess of Chester Health Park, and a 64 bedded Intermediate Care Service at Ellesmere Port Hospital.

The Trust provides services in all of the surgical and medical specialties common to a District General Hospital with some specialist services. The Trust serves the whole of the local population currently in excess of 250,000 residents which geographically covers populations in England and North Wales.

The Trust strives to continuously improve and sustain the quality of its services for patients, providing care to more than 445,000 patients per year, with almost 4,000 staff working together putting quality and patient safety, at the heart of everything we do. The organisation provides a wide range of services offering health care to the whole spectrum of the population from birth to the end of life. The Trust complies with its terms of authorisation as a Foundation Trust.

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.