Highly Specialist Clinical

Highly Specialist Clinical / Counselling Psychologist

This is an exciting opportunity for highly specialist Clinical Health Psychologists to take up a role in a team focussing on the psychological management of long Covid.

As Long Covid is a relatively new condition with an emerging research base, the service works innovatively, with a commitment to service evaluation and audit to continuously increase our understanding and provide the most appropriate support for patients with the condition.

The team consists of Psychologists, Cognitive Behaviour Therapists, Assistant Psychologists and Trainee Clinical Psychologists. There will be opportunities to contribute to post-Covid MDTs alongside medicalConsultants, GPs, Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists.

The post holders will also contribute to the provision of psychological treatment, both in groups and individual sessions. The post holders will develop close links with acute, community and mental health services. It is ideally suited for someone who has experience and interest in working with a wide range of professionals to provide holistic care to patients with ongoing health conditions.

The team works both remotely and in various locations across the North-West London region, with an emphasis on cross borough working.

As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings

Main duties of the job

The aims of the post-Covid syndrome service are as follows:

• Contribute as full members of multidisciplinary teams in the existing post-Covid services
• Provide evidence-based treatment for service users requiring psychological intervention, including groups
• Provide specialist supervision and consultation to other professionals throughout the system who are working with post-Covid syndrome
• Develop robust outcomes and use these to advance understanding of psychological interventions within post-Covid syndrome

About us

The NW London integrated care system has developed specialist services for individuals who have post-Covid syndrome. There are currently two tiers of provision:

? Post-Covid acute assessment clinics? Post-Covid community MDTs

These services are multidisciplinary and all include Psychologists as key members of the MDTs. The provision is focussed on assessment, triage, diagnostic clarification, signposting , case management and intervention (both 1:1 and group).

The psychology provision is run as a partnership between CNWL, West London NHS Trust and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, with an emphasis on cross-borough working.

There will be a requirement to attend some meetings in person and provide face-to-face interventions. However, post holder will be able to work remotely, including working from home for at least half of the week.

This recruitment is taking place with both West London NHS Trust and CNWL working together. Candidates may state a preference for employment in either trust.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Key Result Areas & Performance :

Clinical:

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of patients referred to the service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of highly complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patients care.
• To formulate, develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patients psychological problems and adjustment, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• Ensure equity of access to psychological assessments and interventions adapting approaches where needed, practicing in a culturally informed manner and supporting others to do so
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• To establish rapport and build effective working relationships with patients and all those involved in their care.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by neuropsychologically and psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide highly specialised psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to patients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
• To ensure that all relevant professionals have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of patients in the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management with particular reference to deliberate self-harm.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
• To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by staff

Teaching, Training and Supervision:

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from an appropriately experienced senior psychologist.
• To provide supervision and consultation to other MDT staff as appropriate.
• To support and supervise recently qualified, pre-qualified (e.g. Assistant Psychologists) and other psychology and psychological therapies staff
• To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
• To provide formal teaching and training sessions on psychological aspects of neurological conditions to fellow professionals, patients, relatives and carers
• To have a Personal Development Plan and Individual Objectives that meet the requirements of the professional body and both Trusts.

Research and Service Evaluation

• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate service-related research and provide research advice to other health professionals undertaking research when appropriate.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams operational policies and services through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To provide timely and accurate activity reports and data.

Workforce

• To manage the workloads of Assistant Psychologists and Trainee Clinical Psychologists or other members of the MDT, within the framework of the team/services policies and procedures.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the short-listing and interviewing of Assistant Psychologists or other members of the team.

Partnerships: Communications and Relationships

• To maintain and develop effective professional working relationships with senior management within each service level agreement.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner at all times through all interventions with patients and staff.
• Establish forums to allow patients and staff to provide feedback on the effective management and operation of the services to continually review best practice.

General

• To ensure the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.
• To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
• To maintain and promulgate the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures. Clinical record keeping and incident reporting will be undertaking according to the systems and procedures of the relevant Trust.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to mental health.

Health and Wellbeing

• Physical skills the post holder will be expected to manage a demanding working day, whereby they will be meeting several clients and families on a daily basis alongside on-going liaison with internal and external professionals. The post holder will need to be familiar with and comfortable with using computer technology.
• Emotional and mental demands the post holder will need to manage difficult and emotional encounters with clients, families and carers. Due to the nature of this therapeutic work, there will be experiences of hearing difficult and at times distressing information, the post holder will be expected to consider their self-care and utilise their clinical and line managerial supervision in an effective manner.
• Environment and working conditions the post holder will be based within an acute hospital setting but may be expected to work at other sites, if appropriate. The post holder will be expected to manage and support situations whereby there is verbal/physical aggression, they will be supported by mandatory training to address these needs alongside clinical and line managerial supervision and adherence to the Trust policies.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• oPost-graduate doctoral level training in clinical / counselling psychology, or its equivalent, leading to registration as a Clinical / Counselling Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council.
• oFormal training in supervision of other psychologists.

Desirable

• oPost-doctoral training in Clinical Neuropsychology or other directly relevant field of applied psychology.

Experience

Essential

• oExperience of working with patients with physical health conditions
• oExperience of working with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
• oExperience providing psychological assessments and interventions to service users from diverse and marginalised backgrounds
• oDemonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical psychologist or an alternative agreed by the Chief Psychologist.
• oExperience of the application of applied psychology in different cultural contexts and experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Desirable

• oExperience of working at a specialist clinical psychologist level in a medical or neurorehabilitation setting.
• oExperience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• oExperience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• oDoctoral level knowledge of clinical / counselling psychology including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology, models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology.
• oSkills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• oDoctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.

Desirable

• oHigh level of knowledge of the theory and practice of Clinical Neuropsychology
• oKnowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies for patients with physical health problems.

Other

Essential

• oAbility to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• oAbility to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.

Employer details

Employer name

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Sites Across North West London

North West London

SW1V 2RH

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

333-G-HM-0646

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