Senior Practitioner Psychologist

Job responsibilities

1. To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of staff based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with staff, family members and others involved in their care.2. To formulate plans for formal psychological treatment and/or management of patients based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of staff members problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.3. To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialist psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across clinical teams, and in synthesis, adjusting and refining of psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.4. To make highly skilled evaluations and 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.5. To address the needs of informal carers and family members as appropriate.6. To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the psychological treatment and discharge of staff members ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, and communicating and liaising with referrers and others involved with the care on a regular basis.7. To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to staff members treatment.8. To ensure that all members of the clinical team(s) in which the psychologist works have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of patients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual staff members and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychologists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.10. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients under the consultants care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.11. To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the clinical team(s) involved with care of staff members.12. To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of staff members to relevant staff and agencies outside the Trust.

Qualifications

Essential

• Satisfactory completion of postgraduate doctoral level training in psychology (or its equivalent for those trained before1996) as accredited by the BPS.
• Eligibility for entry onto the British Psychological Society Register of Chartered Psychologists.
• Registered with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist

Desirable

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• Specialist training or demonstrable expertise in one or more areas of research methodology

Experience

Essential

• Post-qualification experience of working as a practitioner psychologist
• Experience of working as a qualified psychologist with healthcare professionals.
• Working with a wide variety of client groups, across the adult life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across a range of care settings including outpatient and in-patient settings
• Maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan
• Teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
• Representing the profession in local policy or planning forums.

Desirable

• Experience in staff support services
• Experience in service development and/or innovation
• Membership of national professional or interprofessional groups
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts
• Experience of research in relevant settings

Knowledge

Essential

• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Advanced theoretical and practical knowledge of psychology, consistent with doctoral level professional training and further post qualification study, training and/or supervised experience.
• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies.
• Specialist clinical knowledge of psychology, consistent with previous experience in a similar setting
• Ability to plan, organise and provide teaching and training on relevant psychological topics, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
• Knowledge of relevant legislation and DoH policy and implementation guidelines, and of the implications of such documentation for clinical practice and professional management in relation in health care services in particular
• Evidence of continuing professional development consistent with expected standards of the British Psychological Society and relevant subdivisions (e.g. Division of Clinical Psychology).
• Familiarity with the ethical and professional standards expected of Clinical Psychologists as laid down in the collated BPS 'Code of Ethics and Conduct' (2009).
• Awareness and thorough understanding of the political, social and economic policy framework within which health and mental health services are delivered and an ability to articulate and interpret clearly the role of the professions of clinical, health and counselling psychology within this context.

Desirable

• Experience of research in psychological aspects of staff support.
• Post-qualification experience of research in an NHS setting.
• Experience of working in a clinical research environment
• Specialist knowledge of staff support

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).