Principal Practitioner Psychologist

Job responsibilities

Job Summary:

An exciting opportunity to develop this newly created post, working as part of the department Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust. Expectations of the post-holder include:

To provide highly specialist psychological support to babies, their families and staff on the Neonatal Care Unit at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

To liaise closely with the multi disciplinary team to provide specialised advice and consultation on babies and families psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues.

To supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychological professionals on the unit.

To provide clinical supervision for a 0.2wte band 8a psychologist at Winchester Neonatal Unit as part of the hub and spoke staffing standards model.

To work systemically, supporting the neonatal MDT to deliver psychologically informed care to babies and their families.

To contribute to the delivery of teaching, training and supervision for both psychology and non-psychologist colleagues in order to enable them to identify early families who will benefit from specialist input. For example, developing and promoting screening tools for bedside staff to use.

To formulate plans to support families and staff where there might be a breakdown in communication or relationship.

To utilise research skills for the purposes of audit, policy development and research, joined with other practitioner psychologists in the Thames Valley and Wessex Neonatal ODN as well as with the Lead Psychologist in the ODN.

To contribute to service evaluation and service development in line with service objectives and with the aim of meeting national and local guidelines and targets.

To liaise with multidisciplinary team colleagues, other health and social care agencies and staff involved with the care group, and with other psychologists both locally and nationally for professional development.

To provide supervision for less experienced psychologists where appropriate including, undergraduate and postgraduate psychology placement students, assistant and trainee psychologists, and qualified psychologists.

To support the development of clinical health psychology services and pathways through formal and informal links with practitioner psychologists providing clinical health psychology and liaison psychology services in both the acute hospital and local community.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Clinical

1.1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments to families while they are currently on the Neonatal Unit. This will be based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with families and others involved in the babys care.

1.2. To advise on appropriate psychoeducation and training to staff to help them to provide quality emotional support to all families.

1.3. To provide psychological support and supervision for staff working on the unit. This may be in the form of group sessions by providing a safe space for reflection and providing tools and/or sign posting for further support. This will also include either supporting, or leading small group debrief sessions following an emotionally traumatic clinical situation.

1.4. To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate complex information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence, and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors, across the full range of care settings.

1.5. To develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a familys psychological difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the presenting problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

1.6. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

1.7. 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 familys experience.

1.8. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of families, and to manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.

1.9. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the familys formulation and treatment plan.

1.10. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of families in the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

1.11. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all families in the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

1.12. To undertake risk assessment and risk management where appropriate and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures. To assess families for referral onto Mental Health Services should their needs be more relevant for management by those teams.

1.13. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner to families and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of families under their care.

1.14. To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.

1.15. To provide highly specialist expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

1.16. To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory and primary care agencies as appropriate.

1.17. Will be required to sit in a constrained position for therapy and extended assessment.

1.18. May be required to tolerate and manage verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.

1.19. Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be frequently highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy.

2. Teaching, training and supervision

2.1. In common with all Practitioner Psychologists, to receive regular clinical supervision and monthly management supervision, in accordance with good practice and BPS guidelines.

2.2. To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of applied psychology in line with BPS policy on CPD; in particular, to make links with other Clinical Psychologists and Practitioner Psychologists working in Neonatal Care regionally, nationally, and to attend relevant special interest groups and training sessions.

2.3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staffs psychological work, as appropriate.

2.4. To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and Trainee Clinical/ Counselling/ Health Psychologists, as appropriate

2.5. To support placements for Trainee Clinical/Counselling/ Health Psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good psychological care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

2.6. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical, health, counselling and other applied psychologists, as appropriate, through contact within the locality with other Practitioner Psychologists.

2.7. Where appropriate, to offer clinical and/or professional supervision to qualified practitioner psychologists working elsewhere within the organisation.

2.8. To provide advice, consultation, supervision and training to staff working with families across a range of agencies and settings for the provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve family members functioning.

2.9. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholders professional and service manager(s).

2.10. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

Qualifications

Essential

• Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling/health psychology, including models of psychopathology, psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS.
• Registered with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist and evidence of continuing professional development as required by the HCPC.
• Eligible for Full Membership of the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology.

Desirable

• Evidence of pre and/or advanced post qualification training to support specialist therapeutic work in the neonatal context - e.g., parent-infant relationship, and early attachment; perinatal psychological therapies; CBT, EMDR to address trauma and parental wellbeing.
• Further training relevant to working in acute medical settings.
• Evidence of training in leadership; service development, quality improvement and/or project management.
• Pre- or post-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• A track record of conference presentations and publications in the current clinical or related area.

Experience

Essential

• Experience delivering highly skilled psychological assessments, interventions, follow-up and data monitoring utilising at least 2 therapeutic models.
• Experience of supervising pre-qualified psychologists/qualified psychologists and/or professionals from other disciplines.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups and across the full range of clinical severity.
• Experience of liaising with carers and families and external organisations that support these groups.
• Ability to show autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients and liaising with other professionals as and when necessary.
• Experience providing group-based interventions using evidence based psychological approaches.
• Experience of leading MDT group work to share psychological/psychotherapeutic knowledge & skill e.g. consultation, reflective practice, supervision groups.
• Experience designing, conducting and leading on research activities at a doctoral level including service related research and audits.
• Experience of teaching and training health professionals in psychological concepts.

Desirable

• Experience of working in a neonatal, perinatal or critical care environment.
• Experience of working with trauma and bereavement.
• Formal training in supervision.
• Experience of setting up new services.
• Experience of teaching and training others, using a variety of complex multimedia material suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Formal QI training.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively within a team.
• Ability to cope with a fast-paced work environment, maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Ability to assess and monitor risk and draw up appropriate risk management plans.
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information, including contentious and highly distressing information, to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Planning and organising skills for caseload management.
• Skills in self-management, including time-management.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance, including regular supervision, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies as applied in a clinical health psychology setting.

Desirable

• Knowledge of facilitating reflective practice groups and/or debriefs.
• Well developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies relevant to working with families in an acute healthcare environment.
• Excellent presentation skills.
• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a desire to continue to develop expertise in the area.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework, Skills in working with diversity. Ability/skills in working through interpreters.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).