General Practice Suicide Awareness Facilitator

Are you a part of a looking to make a positive impact on patients’ mental health?

Could you become part of a network of Suicide Awareness Facilitators across the County?

In partnership with Derbyshire County Council, The Hub Plus have an exciting opportunity to develop.

 ‘An embedded sustainable suicide prevention training model in Primary Care across Derby and Derbyshire’.

This model will develop staff skills, raise awareness, and develop ownership and understanding of this specific area in primary care teams. Derbyshire is very active in the area of suicide prevention and has its own strategy and partnership forum. Suicide prevention - Derbyshire County Council

• In the UK there are roughly 6000 deaths from suicide each year, of which about 100 are in Derbyshire. This has a ripple effect on families, friends, colleagues, healthcare workers, and the community.
• The rates of suicide have not gone down at all in past 15 years and are rising in certain groups.
• Men are 3-4 times more likely to die by suicide. Suicide is the highest cause of death in young men. Self-harm is the strongest predictor of later suicide and is now more common in young people.
• Primary Care is where 90% of all mental health related consultations take place.
• We need suicide awareness and prevention to be a fundamental core part of our skill base.
• We know suicide is complex but also that in many cases it may have been preventable.
• Primary Care have both the opportunity and desire to prevent suicide so need the training and resources.

In addition to this, every 3 weeks a doctor dies from suicide and every 3 days a nurse is lost to suicide.

It is hoped that the awareness and skills will help staff and colleagues.

Suicide Prevention is everyone’s business, and every member of a practice team can play a vital part.

Indeed, it is imperative that each role is supported to play their part. Therefore, we are inviting applications from clinicians and non-clinicians.

We are looking a for a team of facilitators across the 3 Area boards across the county (North, South, City) who are passionate about improving patient mental health outcomes by becoming Suicide awareness Facilitators.

Primary Care has a key role in in suicide prevention. The NHS Five Year Forward View for Mental Health indicates that a quarter of people who took their own life had been in contact with a health professional, usually their GP, in the last week before they died, and most were in contact within a month before their death. Primary Care has a unique opportunity to identify people in emotional distress and to intervene to help prevent self-harm or suicide.

Suicide prevention is a key focus of the NHS Long Term Plan. Derbyshire’s own Suicide Prevention Framework outlines the key strategic priorities to reducing suicides across the county.

“In Derby and Derbyshire, we will work together to promote positive mental health and wellbeing and inspire hope, so as few people as possible struggle with distress and despair, experience self-harm or die from suicide.”

This programme of work has been commissioned by Derbyshire County Council to increase suicide prevention training across the county by up-skilling members of the primary care workforce to provide training and resources to their colleagues via a locality-based Train-the-Trainer model.

The Offer

Hours:                          16 hours over 24/25 financial year

Location:                      Remote  

Contract type:               Self Employed by invoice paid at £ph. - TBC at interview.