[ref. n51719602] Principal Clinical / Health / Counselling Psychologist, Band 8b
Join us at an exciting time for Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust! We have an ambitious plan for our journey to Outstanding and are looking for aspirational, committed individuals to join us, making a real difference to both staff and patients.
As a former winner of England for excellence award: Tourism destination of the year, the beautiful city of Gloucester and the scenic regency spa town of Cheltenham are fantastic places to work and live.
As a hospital Trust we are currently involved in over 100 clinical trials and studies, whilst also providing acute elective and specialist services to a population of over 620,000.
By joining Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust new colleagues can look forward to a warm welcome and a future full of opportunities and support.
Job overview
Principal Clinical / Health / Counselling Psychologist -
Band 8b
Long Covid and High Intensity Users
15 hours a week (0.4wte) FIXED TERM
This post may be combined with other permanent 8b opportunities in the team in pain and long term conditions.
A newly permanent Band 8b opportunity has arisen for an experienced Practitioner Psychologist (Clinical, Health or Counselling) to take a lead in providing and evaluating a highly specialist psychological interventions to patients with long covid and those with long term conditions or multiple co-morbidities who are high intensity users of services.
Main duties of the job- To provide psychological assessment and therapy for patients with long covid
- To provide some additional psychological input into patients with long term conditions as part of an initial scoping service development.
- To work in collaboration with the lead for Pain and LTCs develop services for patients with multiple comorbidities or high intensity users of GHFT services.
- To liaise closely with the multi-disciplinary team
- To work systemically
- To contribute to the delivery of teaching, training and supervision for non-psychologist colleagues where helpful in relation to complex health issues.
- To utilise research skills for the purposes of audit, policy development and research, joined with other practitioner psychologists
- 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.
Working for our organisation
We can offer you:
- An autonomous 8b role with the flexibility to develop and shape the service going forward
- An innovative, stimulating and well organised department – part of a well-established Psychology Department employing a range of applied psychologists
- A friendly and supportive team of colleagues, excellent peer support and regular supervision
- A commitment to the training and support of applied psychologists and active involvement in the local clinical doctoral courses.
- Dedicated time within the role for advancing special interests and funding for professional development.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Job purpose
To manage and strategically develop and evaluate the Long Covid psychology service.
To provide specialist Psychology assessment and therapy services to patients presenting to the long covid specialty of the GHFT Psychology Service.
To work closely with the respiratory services multidisciplinary team to provide specialist psychological assessment, formulation and therapy, taking full professional responsibility and exercising completely autonomous judgement, in matters of professional practice.
Offer advice and consultation on patients’ psychological, medical and functioning to colleagues within the long covid and respiratory services.
Working autonomously in the execution of these duties and within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the GHFT Psychology Service and Trust policies and procedures
To work with a systems approach to support the psychologically informed care of people living with Long Covid.
To liaise closely with multi-disciplinary teams to provide specialised advice and consultation on psychologically informed care for people with long covid particularly where psychological factors are related to symptom burden, decision making, treatment access or tolerance, ethical considerations or other complexities.
To formulate plans to support patients where there may be cognitive difficulties or where reasonable adjustments are needed.
To utilise research skills for the purposes of audit, policy development and research, joined with other practitioner psychologists and national colleagues.
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 to other qualified psychologists
To provide supervision for other psychological professionals where appropriate, including, undergraduate and postgraduate psychology placement students, assistant and trainee psychologists.
To support the development of psychological services and pathways through formal and informal links with practitioner psychologists in both the hospital and local community.
Dimensions- Clinical
- 1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments to patients referred with long covid. 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
- 2. To advise on appropriate psychoeducation and training to staff to help them to provide high quality psychologically informed support to all patients and families.
- 3. 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.
- 4. To develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patient’s psychological difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the presenting problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
- 5. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
- 6. 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 family’s experience.
- 7. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of patients, and to manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.
- 8. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the patient’s formulation and treatment plan.
- 9. To ensure that members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of patients, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
- 10. 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 patients for referral onto mental health services should their needs be more relevant for management by those teams, and where not under the remit of the mental health liaison team.
- 11. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner to patients, families and others, as appropriate, information that may be highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients under their care.
- 12. To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.
- 13. 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.
- 14. To work in partnership with the cancer and haematology psychology services, other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory and primary care agencies, as appropriate.
- 15. Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be frequently highly distressing, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy.
Further information is detailed in the JD and Person Specification document
Additional Contact: Julia Frearson- Lead for Pain and Long Term Conditions 0300 422 8523
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria- Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling/health psychology as accredited by the BPS
- Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist
- Further training in psychological approaches to psychological approaches related to long covid other life-limiting conditions
- 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 criteria- Experience delivering highly skilled psychological assessments, interventions, follow-up and data monitoring utilising at least two therapeutic models.
- Experience of supervising pre-qualified psychologists/qualified psychologists and/or professionals from other disciplines.
- Experience of teaching and training health professionals in psychological concepts
- Substantial and demonstrable post-qualification experience of working as a HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist with experience working with people with medical problems.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the full range of clinical severity and across a range of care settings (outpatients, community, inpatients).
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified healthcare professional and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary team approach.
- Experience of working in long covid or other relevant physical health.
- Formal training in supervision. Experience of setting up new services. Formal Quality Improvement training.
- Experience of neuropsychological assessment
Knowledge/ Skills
Essential criteria- psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration. Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies as applied in a clinical health psychology setting.
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- Able to take responsibility for managing and providing a specialist service, or systematically providing part of a larger service. Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
- Well developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies relevant to working with patients & families in an acute healthcare environment
- Well developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies relevant to working with patients & families in an acute healthcare environment.
The health and wellbeing of our staff and patients remains the priority of the Trust. Vaccination remains the best chance we have of conquering COVID and the Trust encourages everyone to take up this offer.
Please note, this vacancy may close as soon as sufficient applications have been received, so please apply as soon as possible if you are interested. The Recruitment Team are unable to accept any applications after the position has closed on NHS Jobs.
Committed to safeguarding our community
If applicable for the post, all successful candidates will be required to pay for their own Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. The cost will be £29 (standard checks) or £46 (enhanced checks), and will be recovered through two instalments from the candidate's salary.Please contact [email protected] for further information.
The Trust is a safeguarding employer committed to the safeguarding and promotion of welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects staff and volunteers to share this commitment. The Trust is committed to safe recruitment practices to protect children and vulnerable adults, and any appointment will be subject to satisfactory clearance.As part of the organisation's commitment to Safer Recruitment, candidates may request copies of relevant policies and procedures by contacting the Recruitment Team at [email protected]
Committed to supporting service personnel
As part of our commitment to support Service Personnel, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Career Transition Partnership, offer a Guaranteed Interview Scheme for all qualifying Service and Ex-Service Personnel.To qualify for a guaranteed interview, candidates must meet the essential criteria for the post and be either a current member of the Armed Forces, or be within the two year period of resettlement. If this applies to you please email the job reference number and your AR number to the Recruitment Team at [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter: @GHNHSFTCareers