Medical Examiner

Medical Examiners conduct a robust, transparent and independent scrutiny of the death certification processes. Applicants must be practising medical practitioners who have been on the general medical council register for a minimum of five years post registration.

The role will mainly be based at Ipswich Hospital but there may be some scope for cross site working with Colchester and remote working is a possibility when deaths from all non-acute settings are also included.

Verification of clinical information on Medical Certificates of Cause of Death and scrutiny of care episodes to identify any clinical governance concerns. This may lead to referral to the coroner for further investigation or Structured Judgement Review (SJR) in some cases. Identifying trends in mortality or clinical incidents.

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) provides hospital and community health care. We serve a wide geographical area with a population approaching 800,000 residents. We deliver care services from two main hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, six community hospitals, high street clinics and in patients’ own homes. We have nearly 10,000 staff, with an annual budget of over £650 million. We are the largest NHS organisation in the East Anglia.

We are building for better care with an exciting capital development programme across our sites - totalling £100million over the next five years.

We are building a new elective orthopaedic centre for ESNEFT at Colchester Hospital. It will be one of the biggest centres in the country and will ensure we can retain complex and low volume cases locally for the people we serve.

We are also now building a £7million specialist interventional radiology and cardiac angiography unit at Colchester.

At Ipswich we are investing £35million in a new Emergency Department and co-located Urgent Treatment Centre, with additional diagnostic imaging kit (MRI and CT). There’s a £5.3million molecular diagnostic laboratory soon to open at Ipswich, and works begins soon for a new Breast Care Centre and a Children’s Unit.

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- To undertake a minimum average of 8 case reviews per month
- To ensure compliance with the legal and procedural requirements associated with the current and proposed reformed processes of certification, investigation by coroners and registration of deaths.
- To scrutinise the certified causes of death offered by attending doctors in a way that is proportionate, consistent and compliant with the proposed national protocol.
- To discuss and explain the cause of death with next of kin/informants in a transparent, tactful and sympathetic manner. It is anticipated that such discussions will be predominately conducted through telephone conversations where barriers to understanding information may exist.
- To ensure that all users of the ME system are treated with respect and are not discriminated against on the grounds of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.
- To maintain comprehensive records of all deaths scrutinised and undertake analysis to provide information to the National Medical Examiner’s office.
- To participate in relevant clinical governance activities relating to death certification including audits, mortality review processes and investigations regarding formal complaints about patient care.
- To support the training of junior doctors in their understanding of death certification and promote good practice in accurate completion of MCCDs.
- To work with medical examiner officers (MEOs), delegating duties as appropriate.
- To engage with lead ME and lead MEO for the region.
- To adopt a collaborative working relationship with other MEs by sharing experiences and expertise to support peer learning and set uniform standards of service delivery.