Question: What exactly does a medical consultant do?

Sheffield Psychiatry Ward Team answered on 24 Jan 2019: last edited 24 Jan 2019 5:54 pm

Hi, Emma here 🙂

So consultants are like the ‘experts’ in their specialty.

In psychiatry, consultants have overall responsibility for their patients.

They are the ones (as well as Registrars who are just below a consultant) who can recommend whether someone needs to be admitted to hospital, and if someone is too poorly to agree then consultants can use the Mental Health Act to bring them to hospital even if they don’t agree to it – because it is not safe for them to be at home (this is sometimes called ‘sectioning’). There are legal protections for patients who are under a section, so Consultants will sometimes have to write reports or attend meetings where they justify why a patient is in hospital – these are called Tribunals.

Consultants also make overall decisions about medications, using their experience and their teams’ knowledge about the patient to decide which one is best for them. Consultants supervise their juniors (usually a team will have a registrar and some doctors earlier in their training, but this varies) so sometimes they will support their juniors to decide which medications are best. They also help the juniors learn by watching them assessing people and giving feedback, as well as being on hand to offer advice and guidance.

Consultants also offer advice to other specialties if they need help with a patient of their own with mental health issues or on complicated medications.

Each speciality will have their own specific jobs too – for example in the community the consultants often have their own clinics as well, a bit like a GP will see patients at the surgery they will see patients at their base.