Clinical Psychologist Stroke Preceptorship Band 7/8A

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Summary

The post holder will be responsible for providing, specialist comprehensive psychological and neuropsychological assessments (stroke) and programmes of psychological care for individuals who have experienced a stroke and their families. This will include work with people in the in-patient stroke rehabilitation unit and following discharge into the community where appropriate. They will work collaboratively with the other health and social care professionals, third sector staff and non-professional carers. They will help organise and initiate service developments in consultation with the lead psychologist. As well as managing their own patient workload they will be responsible for supervising the psychological work of Assistant Psychologists and other MDT staff. They will work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Stroke Services policies and procedures.

Key Responsibilities

Clinical

• Provide a specialist clinical service to patients and their families who have had a stroke.
• Develop trusting and empathic relationships with clients and be able to communicate highly emotive information with clarity and sensitivity.
• Assess and interpret complex clinical situations and information from a variety of sources including, self-report measures, rating scales, structured observations and semi structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patients care.
• Develop formulations and use psychological models and frameworks to provide patients and their families with specialised programmes of care, based on evidence of efficacy, to aid rehabilitation and help them adjust to and cope emotionally with the often significantly distressing aspects of their condition. This may occur in individual or group settings.
• 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.

• Provide assessment and interventions to enable rehabilitation for clients referred from the stroke rehabilitation unit.
• Carry out neuropsychological assessments where appropriate and communicate findings to the client, family members and other health and social care staff involved.
• Make recommendations and contribute to the neuropsychological and physical rehabilitation of clients with a stroke.
• Help facilitate therapeutic groups where needed in collaboration with other psychologists and MDT staff.
• Participate in multi-disciplinary team meetings and work collaboratively and in an integrated manner with other health professionals e.g. Specialist Nurses, Occupational therapists, Medical Consultants, Physiotherapists, Speech Language Therapists and other NHS and social services staff.
• Liaise regularly and work collaboratively with the existing psychologist in stroke.
• Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To carry out and contribute to mental capacity assessments where appropriate in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• Responsible for prioritising work activities according to service and user needs and resources and managing own clinical case load.
• Responsible for providing specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation on the psychological care of clients to non-psychologist colleagues as appropriate.
• Responsible for maintaining own competency to practice through continuing professional development and further develop specialist knowledge and skills relevant to the service and clinical psychology.
• Participate in Professional Development Reviews, line management meetings and peer support.
• To attend and participate in Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology Team meetings and contribute to clinical governance in these services.

1. Management, Policy and Service Development

• Work collaboratively within the NHS and multi-agency groups to advance good working relationships with local health, social care, third sector and voluntary staff and service users to ensure integration of initiatives and services
• Advise both service and professional management on developments to the Stroke Service in consultation with other staff and in line with local and national guidance documents e.g. National Clinical Guidelines For Stroke.
• Responsible for maintaining satisfactory records of service operation and clinical activity in accordance with agreed protocols, regular auditing service data and ensuring security of confidential data.
• Adhere to current policies in the Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology Services and all trust policy and procedures related to risk, health and safety and confidentiality of information.
• Participate in quality improvement projects in Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology in conjunction with the lead Psychologist.
• To be accountable to the Head of Clinical Health Psychology and the Team Leads for clinical governance e.g. issues of quality, clinical effectiveness and clinical risk.
• To be managed by the Consultant Clinical Psychologist in consultation with the relevant Team Lead.

Teaching, Training and Supervision

• Provide leadership and direction on psychological issues in MDTs, in conjunction with the existing psychologist.
• Receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines and as expected for all Clinical Psychologists
• Provide regular supervision for Assistant Psychologists and other MDT staff where appropriate.
• Provide support to other staff working in challenging circumstances to manage the emotional demands of their clinical roles.
• Responsible for providing education and training in the psychological aspects of care to empower and enable other health and social care staff to achieve the highest standards of psychosocial care, under the guidance of a more senior psychologist.
• Take appropriate care of trust equipment and resources used in the course of work.
• Undertake all trust mandatory training requirements.

1. Research and Development

• Utilise research skills for audit and service evaluation as well as clinically relevant research.
• Disseminate results through presenting at case discussions, workshops, and conferences and/or through publication.
• Supervise the psychologically related research of trainees, assistants and other health professionals.
• Consider theory, evidence based literature and research to support evidence based practise in individual work and work with other team members.
• Examine and study new ways of working or transferring existing practical and theoretical models of work from one context to another.

5. Information Technology

Skilled at use of information technology systems to support service related work e.g. word processing and use of databases.

• Uses information technology systems to support formal and informal research activities: developing databases, collecting, collating and entering data and statistical analysis.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Hons degree in psychology 2ii or above
• Applied post-graduate psychology qualification accredited for eligibility for chartered status with the BPS - Post-graduate doctorate in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those qualified pre 1996).

Desirable

• Registered with the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC).

Knowledge and Experience

Essential

• Experience of working effectively with individuals from different cultures
• Advanced knowledge of the theory and practise of a range of psychological therapies.

Desirable

• Clinical experience of addressing psychological factors in physical health
• Experience of training non psychologists
• Clinical experience in neuropsychology
• Demonstrates relevant experience as an assistant psychologist or other area of applied psychology
• Knowledge and experience of neuropsychological assessment
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the British Psychological Society and Health and Care Professions Council.
• Experience of training non psychologists

Skills and Aptitudes

Essential

• Able to manage significantly distressing and emotional circumstances in terms of individuals, families and professional colleagues care, in a professional manner.
• Demonstrates an understanding of recent guidelines and national strategies in stroke and able to translate these into practice.
• Doctorate level knowledge of research design and methodology
• Effective IT/key board skills, including experience of Microsoft packages e.g. MS Word, MS Access, MS PowerPoint, to input/manage an information database and analyse statistical information.

Desirable

• Ability to plan, organise and develop service provision in conjunction with service leads.
• Effective presentation and teaching skills using a variety of teaching, training and learning strategies.

Key Competencies

Essential

• Is able to undertake complex psychological assessments, formulation and treatment of patients with stroke and their families in an empathic manner. Analysing and interpreting complex information from different sources, formulate and articulate sound judgements in areas of clinical work where opinions may differ.
• Able to integrate and communicate complex information and plans to the client, and other professionals in a sensitive and clear manner. Communication will often be around highly emotive subjects and often in an emotionally distressing atmosphere.
• Is responsible and accountable for own professional actions working within BPS professional guidelines and trust policy.
• Able to undertake psychological assessment and therapy in an emotionally demanding environment with frequent exposure to highly distressing or highly emotional circumstances including situations of family violence and breakdown, sexual abuse and terminal illness.
• Will be required to sit for long periods of time and mentally focus on complex information during assessment and treatment sessions
• Is able to develop good professional relationships and work effectively with other team members.
• Committed to promoting clients rights, independence and choice and observing codes of practise around issues of client confidentiality.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust

Address

Hollybank House

Coltham Road, Short heath

Willenhall

WV13 5QD

Employer's website

https://walsallhealthcare.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)