Clinical Psychologist

Job summary

Why might this job interest you?

Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trustare currently looking for a determined andexperienced Clinical Psychologist to join their Clinical Health Psychology Team at West Berkshire Community Hospital. If you are looking to expand your NHS experience anddevelop your skillset within a supportive team then we would like to hearfrom you

Withinthis role, you will beproviding specialistpsychological assessments to make complex diagnoses. You will conduct interventionswith clients and then formulate and implement psychological treatment plans. Aswell as this, you will offer consultation and specialist psychological input tothe Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) to contribute to client's formulation,diagnosis and treatment plan

Main duties of the job

Workingas part of the clinical team and supported by peers and the Head of Psychologyfor Adult Community Physical Health, the post holder will provide specialistneuropsychological assessment and therapy.They will manage a clinical caseload and lead the clinical service delivery. Organising clinicalprovision and exercising responsibility for its systematic governance, thepostholder will ensure the delivery of high quality, safe and effective psychologicalassessments and interventions. The post holder will offer advice and consultation onpatients psychological care to other clinical members of the team who providepsychologically and physically based care and treatment. Toprovide line management and clinical supervision to both qualified andunqualified psychologists working within the team.

Working with the service manager and the ConsultantPsychologist, and in collaboration with other clinicians, leads, managers andadministrators, the postholder will initiate, contribute to, coordinate, andlead the clinical provision and service improvement. As required, thepostholder will design, implement, and manage operational and administrativesystems and resources to enable services to work effectively.

About us

Here at NHS Professionals, we run England's largest NHS staff bank and are experts at putting people in places to care. Every year we help thousands of dedicated and highly skilled NHS workers enjoy better career opportunities, more flexible shifts, and a healthier work-life balance across our partnered Trusts.

Career Progression access to Learning & Development opportunities, so that you can take on new roles and challenges

Work-life Balance flexible shifts, committed shifts, wellbeing resources and build paid annual leave

Opportunity & Access over 50 partner NHS Trusts to give you the flexibility of choice to work how and where you want

Job description

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

To provide clinical leadership and ensure the systematic provision of high-quality psychological services for individuals and their families/ carers within the area of responsibility. In particular, to contribute to the development of a service that meets the agreed service priorities. To provide leadership, consultation, supervision, and training to psychological professionals and trainees, and other members of the clinical team to support psychologically or trauma informed care and provision within the service. To provide expert psychological assessment, case formulation, and intervention for a designated number of service users presenting to the service. To offer consultation and provide specialist advice to psychological and multidisciplinary colleagues, the wider clinical team, other agencies, and non-professional carers. Work autonomously within professional and local guidelines and policies and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service. The post-holder will propose and implement policy changes and service development initiatives within the services and across the Trust, working closely with colleagues as required to progress improvement. This will include a role in effective recruitment, professional appraisal, and the identification of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) needs. The post-holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development, research and teaching and act as a highly specialist resource to the wider professional team.

The post holder will be involved in the training, continuing professional development, and supervision of psychological professionals, trainees, and other members of the clinical team.

The post holder will contribute, as part of the Trust wide psychological professions, to coordinate, develop, promote, and enable coherent and coordinated high quality and cost-effective psychological care across the Trust.

As part of job planning, the post holder will allocate time to supporting Trust wide psychological initiatives, such as staff support services, training programmes, and quality improvement.

RESPONSIBILITIES [PG1]

Clinical Provision

A. Direct

To direct the provision of evidence-based and inclusive psychological services within Neuropsychology, overseeing delivery of the clinical team targets and KPIs. To oversee and undertake specialist clinical assessment of clients with an acquired brain injury, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the care. To ensure assessment information is used to evaluate need and to inform decisions about clinical provision, also taking into account service user/carer views and the views of other professionals alongside information about historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group, relevant theoretical and therapeutic models, research findings and current evidence, and national and service guidance. To evaluate and make decisions about suitability and treatment options, considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning historical, developmental, and sociocultural processes that have shaped the individual, family, or group. To oversee, develop and implement a range of evidence based psychological and/or psychotherapeutic interventions for individuals, carers, families, and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon relevant explanatory models, maintaining several provisional hypotheses, and monitoring the outcomes to ensure effectiveness. To negotiate and support the implementation of such plans with service users and their families/carers as well as with other services and agencies also involved in the care as required. To undertake specialist risk assessment and safety planning, support risk assessment and safety planning within the clinical team and to provide advice to other professionals and system partners where required and contribute to multi-agency collaboration where there is a high level of risk and/or complexity. Based on the risk assessment, contribute to the risk management plan for individual service users open to the service, and provide advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management where there is a high level of risk or complexity. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of service users, acting as the Named Professional where appropriate, and to liaise with the multidisciplinary team for the integration of the psychological input into multidisciplinary care plans. To communicate and aid others to communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, specialist, complex, and sensitive clinical information; information concerning assessment, formulation and treatment plans, enabling multi-professional and multi-agency care whilst ensuring the information is understood by service users who may be anxious and/or otherwise compromised. To collaborate effectively and negotiate complex situations where clinical information and opinion may differ and proposals for intervention may produce disagreement and conflicts within families and/or staff involved in the service users overall care. To continually deliver and maintain high quality and compassionate care, accessible, inclusive and respectful of all service users, recognising diversity, ethnicity, cultural, belief and the individual capacities of services users, their families and carers. To operate within the principles of recovery and to support each service user to reduce dependence on services, enabling a planned discharge as part of the patients recovery plan.

B. Indirect

To provide specialist advice, consultation and clinical guidance to other professionals, services and system partners, contributing directly to service users formulations, diagnoses and treatment plans, within the service and area of specialism. To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of service users through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research, and theory and to support the effective and appropriate provision of and referral to psychological care by all members of the clinical team. To contribute to integrated multidisciplinary team working within the service to ensure services users and their carers experience seamless, joined up care. To attend, contribute to and, where appropriate, chair multi-agency meetings to achieve positive outcomes, particularly for the more challenging clinical presentations. To provide clinical leadership and case sensitive supervision, attending particularly to staff and patient safety, when devising specialist psychological interventions service users. To maintain and develop collaborative working relationships with professionals from the wider partner agencies, and with service user and carer networks.

To deputise for the Consultant at professional and service leads meetings, contributing to psychology leads meetings, and acting in an advisory capacity to other staff members.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

Professional qualification in neuro, clinical or counselling psychology. Post graduate doctoral qualification in clinical or counselling psychology (or equivalent for those who trained prior to 1996) which provides eligibility for Chartered Membership of the BPS (British Psychological Society).

Experience

Essential

Experience working with acquired brain injury and/or stroke. Experience of specialist assessment and formulation and treatment of adults in inpatient and/ or community settings. Experience of liaising with clinical and management colleagues around service improvement in a relevant area.

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