Medical Examination Officer

The Medical Examiner Service at the North Middlesex University Trust was established in June 2020 and currently comprises four Medical Examiners and one full time Medical Examiner Officer. This team combines clinical skills and compassion to scrutinise the circumstances and cause of death for all deceased patients, oversee the death certification process and liaise with the bereaved. We are now planning the expansion of our team to cover community deaths in Haringey and Enfield.

The Medical Examiner Officer is expected to support the Medical Examiners to scrutinise deaths to an agreed policy and time frame, facilitate referrals to the Coroner, and communicate with the bereaved.

**For further details / informal visits please contact**:
To act as an intermediary between the bereaved and clinicians to establish and help 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 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.

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 refer patients to the 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.

North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust is a medium sized District General Hospital based in Edmonton in Enfield, North London. We serve a diverse multicultural population largely from the London boroughs of Enfield and Haringey. Many of our patients live in wards that are within the 5% most deprived in the UK and a large proportion of our patients were born abroad. This makes it both a fascinating and a challenging hospital to work in.

Over the last decade we have rebuilt almost all of the hospital and now have facilities that we are proud to work in. We employ over 3,500 staff, more than half of whom live locally. We encourage apprenticeships from the local community and work closely with our local Health Watch.

We are proud of our staff and want to ensure their training allows them to provide excellent clinical care. We are also a training unit for medical students from UCL and St George’s University Grenada, and for nursing and midwifery students from Middlesex and City Universities.

In our most recent CQC report (2019) we are still found to ‘require improvement’, but the report noted the achievements since the previous report, with a positive shift in culture and quality, notably in our Emergency and Maternity departments. Our Trust vision and objectives show our aspirations to develop towards ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’.

To act as an intermediary between the bereaved and clinicians to establish and help 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 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.

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 refer patients to the coroner for further investigation on approval by the medical examiner.