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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Knowledge, Training and Experience Required:

1. Fully qualified as a practitioner psychologist with a doctorate degree and associated professional status in clinical psychology (or its equivalent) recognised by the Health and Care Professions Council (HPCC) and the British Psychological Society (BPS) Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP). 

2. Registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist.

3. Knowledge of and experience of psychological interventions in traumatic physical injury and broadly in the specialty of clinical health psychology.

4. At least the equivalent of three years full time relevant post-qualification experience.

5. Extended knowledge and experience of the application of psychological models of health and illness for the purposes of assessment and treatment. This is acquired through post-doctoral professional development.

6. Knowledge and experience of establishing, developing, and closing therapeutic relationships with individuals, relatives and groups.

7. Knowledge of the evidence base for psychological assessment, interpretation, rationale for intervention, and outcome evaluation strategies, as applied to the field of clinical health psychology, reflecting up-to-date knowledge of clinical guidance and relevant clinical research literature.

8. Relevant post qualification experience of multi-professional team working and an awareness of the demands of integrating psychological care with other facets of emergency/acute hospital care and coordinated team work.

9. Experience of communicating sensitive and complex information, both verbal and written, where such information is difficult to convey, (e.g. explaining the complexities and relevance of complex family dynamics or differing reactions to distressing events in care planning).

10. Knowledge and experience of undertaking regular clinical supervision, recognising the need for this and observing the appropriate professional practices involved. The arrangement, frequency and records of clinical supervision to be agreed with the professional line manager.

11. A developed expertise of methods of service evaluation and for the critical appraisal of research in health psychology. The knowledge necessary for the completion of clinical research proposals, research ethics submissions, the administration of trials, statistical and qualitative analysis, reporting, and dissemination/publication.

12. Post-doctoral knowledge/ experience of psychometrics as applied to the clinical context, including the screening and evaluation of cognitive impairment.

Skills Required:

1. Personal psychological resilience for working with the often severe psychological distress of patients and relatives during acute hospital care and afterwards. This is the main characteristic of the role and usual reason for people being referred to the service. It encompasses a wide range including depressive withdrawal, post-trauma psychological effects, suicide threat, and intense anxiety/panic. It requires the ability to make appropriate use of clinical supervision. The post holder is therefore required to have a high level of self-awareness and emotional composure, to be able to maintain a high degree of professionalism in what are often rapidly evolving situations in clinical care.

2. To be able to draw together multiple sources of assessment information, identifying critical components, in reaching an interpretation and rationale on which interventions can be planned and carried out. This requires that the post holder will at times formulate a rationale for intervention where no evidence base has been developed.

3. To convey sensitive and complicated information to colleagues, clients and relatives, where barriers exist, such as the non-acceptance of personally devastating information to a client. This is also a main characteristic of clients and the reason for referral to this service, i.e. where an individual is in severe difficulty facing a need for major behavioural/ emotional adjustment. This requires the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills.

4. To work collaboratively, knowing when to engage other disciplines e.g. working jointly or referring on (e.g. for evaluation of psychotropic medication or regarding the management of risk).

5. To administer and interpret formal standardised psychological assessment procedures.

6. To effectively communicate the findings of psychological assessment and the rationale for interventions, potentially in an atmosphere of conflict involving clients, their relatives, and healthcare professionals. This includes caution and vigilance regarding the way that expert psychological opinion or evaluation findings may be misinterpreted or misrepresented by others.

7. To provide individual and group-based therapeutic interventions using evidence-based approaches, providing appropriate indicators of outcomes.

8. To manage competing work demands in a rational way by organising and prioritising a patient workload with other pressures including supervision, training, governance, and professional commitments, in circumstances where these vary unpredictably, and often exceed the available time and resources. This includes an open and cooperative approach with service leads for managing fluctuating demands on the overall service.

9. Competency for using IT equipment for the purposes of communication, record keeping and governance and other matters such as test administration and clinical research.

10. To provide teaching/training on psychological matters within the MDTs and elsewhere as may be relevant to service provision.