GenderCare

Dr Vikinjeet Bhatia
MBBS, MRCPsych
Consultant Psychiatrist and Gender Specialist

Certificate in Quality Improvement with Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

I have a keen interest in gender medicine and started a special interest at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) to advance my training and experience. I was delighted to be offered a permanent consultant psychiatrist post at the clinic in 2016. Alongside my work at Charing Cross GIC, I also work in General Adult Psychiatry outpatient clinic in Ealing.

I am a member of British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS), World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), European Professional Association for Transgender Health (EPATH), and Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych). I attend regular conferences to keep up to date with new developments in gender medicine and psychiatry.

My work as a Gender Specialist includes outpatient clinic reviews for hormone therapy and suitability for chest and gender reassignment surgery. During my reviews I also consider patient health (general and mental health) and psycho-social stability which allows me to identify how best to support my patients.

In addition to my consultant role, I was also an Associate Faculty Tutor overseeing psychiatry training programme for my consultant colleagues. At present I am the Quality Improvement Lead for my service and I recently completed a postgraduate certificate in Quality Improvement. This has enabled me to understand how healthcare services can be improved and I continually aim to apply this knowledge to all parts of my clinical care. My future plans are to further advance my postgraduate qualifications and training in this field.

Within general psychiatry practice, I see patients with various mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, autism and ADHD. I have developed my skills further by attending various courses in assessment, medication and psychological treatments for those with ADHD and Autism.

At Charing Cross GIC, I have also overseen projects to improve patient experience such as compiling patient information leaflets for those seeking Chest Reconstruction Surgery. I am also currently working on a leaflet providing patients with more information on their journey within the clinic, highlighting what to expect at each appointment stage.

I have presented at events hosted by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), European Professional Association for Transgender Health (EPATH) and Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych).

My first presentation focused on factors impacting long stay patients within the clinic and how we can better understand and improve the clinic pathway (WPATH 2016).

In my clinical practice, I started coming across increasing number of patients who identified as non-binary. I was keen to research the number of cases being referred, so that the service can better understand how to improve access and care provided. These findings were recently presented at EPATH in 2019 and is currently in publication.

Within general psychiatry, I have presented at the Royal College International Psychiatry Conference on ECT training for psychiatry junior doctors (2014). This training programme was extremely well received and became the training gold standard across the organisation.

As part of my interest and training in psychotherapy, I have co-chaired a psychotherapy group (using mentalisation based techniques) and have seen various psychotherapy cases.

My aims are to deliver high quality, high informative holistic care to all my patients. Outside of work I like reading various books and have a keen interest in the automotive industry and their business models and how they aim to constantly be in a state of evolution without losing focus of core principles.