Senior Practitioner Psychologist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job outline:

To work as a member of the Bariatric MDT at St Richard's Hospital, University Hospital Sussex. To be clinically based with the bariatric team, providing a high quality, specialist applied psychology service to patients across the bariatric surgical pathway. In addition, to support psychological practice within the unit through consultation, supervision, formulation and training.

To participate in systematic clinical governance and to offer clinical supervision to assistant, trainee and more junior psychologists and other staff. To utilise research skills for audit, service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Scope & Authority:

To provide a qualified, high-quality specialist psychology service to individuals and groups accessing care from the bariatric surgical MDT, in line with best, evidence-based practice and trust care pathways.

• To contribute to the development of a comprehensive psychology service which covers pre-surgical assessment and therapeutic intervention pre- and post-operatively where appropriate in alignment with service care pathways.

To be responsible for holding and managing a clinical caseload and to exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the planning and prioritising of own workload and the assessment, treatment and discharge of patients, within the bounds of the service operational policy.

To use analytical and judgment skills and be responsible for taking clinical management decisions in complex clinical issues.

To clinically supervise assistant psychologists, trainee psychologists and junior psychologists, psychological therapists or counsellors and other staff as appropriate.

To professionally supervise and, when appropriate, manage, assistant psychologists and trainee psychologists

To provide consultation, mentorship, supervision and advice about psychological issues to other members of the team/service and other professionals working with service users, across a range of agencies/ settings as appropriate.

To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.

To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit, and to advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

To utilise research skills to undertake service evaluation, audit and research as appropriate and disseminate the results in the service and nationally.

To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the service.

Key Results Areas:

Clinical:

1. To carry out specialist psychological assessments of patients, 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 patients, family members and others involved in the patients care in order to reach a psychological formulation of the patient's difficulties.

2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patients 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 psychological interventions for individuals and groups across the pathway adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

4. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family, or group.

5. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance, and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to patients formulation, diagnoses and treatment plan.

6. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically-based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all patients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the patient group.

7. To undertake risk assessment, formulation and management for individual patients with complex presentations and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

8. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of patients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

9. To promote and participate in multi-disciplinary team working, development and liaison.

10. To promote actively, user and carer involvement in care planning and service.

See JD and PS for full details.

For further information please contact Dr Susan Hennessey, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Lead for Clinical Health Psychology, susan.hennessey@nhs.net.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in applied psychology [or its equivalent for those trained before 1996 or outside the UK*] as approved by the HPC, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Professionally registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Professions Council (HPC).

Knowledge/Experience

Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of patients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in-patient settings
• Demonstrate specialist experience gained postqualification of working as an applied psychologist with evidence of having received a substantial amount of clinical supervision (normally in the region of approximately 50 hours).
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of the application of applied psychology in different cultural contexts and experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience or demonstrable knowledge of working with the particular patient group served by the team/service.
• Experience of working with adults who are overweight/obese and have an understanding of the associated medical comorbidities and the potential social and psychological implications of obesity
• A knowledge of the different types of bariatric surgery and the complexity involved when assessing people for this type of intervention as a treatment for obesity
• A knowledge of mental health difficulties potentially associated with severe obesity and an understanding of when it may be appropriate to refer to other agencies.

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

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Address

St Richards Hospital

Chichester

PO19 6SE

Employer's website

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