Principal Practitioner Psychologist

We have an opportunity for a skilled and knowledgeable psychologist with expertise in long term conditions to join our supportive pain psychology team. This is a varied role that includes group work, individual therapy, supervision of other psychologists, multi-disciplinary consultation and creative service development. You will be joining a friendly and enthusiastic team, and we would love to hear from you if you share our commitment to compassionate and holistic care for people with chronic pain.

Psychological professions are highly valued within Oxleas. The successful candidate will have access to great training and development opportunities (i.e. ACT, CFT and EMDR), a supportive network of other psychologists, and in-house supervision from the Consultant Psychologist who is part of the pain psychology team. They will also have the opportunity to receive training and develop their skills in facilitating reflective practice.

We welcome applicants from a range of backgrounds and flexible and agile working options are available.

Psychologists work closely with other professions, including physiotherapy and nursing colleagues to provide holistic support to our service users, and experience in and enjoyment of multi-disciplinary working is important for this role.

Main duties of the job

A great opportunity for a compassionate psychologist, with experience in long term conditions, to contribute to service provision, service development, supervision and leadership within a busy pain psychology service.

To contribute to the therapeutic work of the service, providing high quality one-to-one therapy and group interventions to our service users, and supervising other psychologists to do so. This includes the skills and experience necessary to embrace more complex presentations where safe and appropriate.

• To continue to develop the service to meet the diverse needs of our service users and support the wider MSK service.
• To contribute to monitoring, evaluation and audit of the service, including monitoring the impact of specific interventions such as EMDR.
• To provide high quality consultation and training to non-psychology colleagues on psychological aspects of care for people with persistent pain, and to support the practice of trauma-informed care across the MSK service.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service.

About us

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our values:

• We're Kind
• We Listen
• We Care

Job responsibilities

Clinical:

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the MSK Pain Management Service and other clients deemed appropriate by the psychology and service leads from the general MSK service 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 clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.

2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental and physical health problems including the psychological management of physical symptoms e.g pain management skills using an appropriate conceptual framework, 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, carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

4. To use routine outcome measures as required by the service.

5. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models with particular reference to pain management and health psychology theory and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

6. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

7. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

8. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

9. 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.

10. To contribute to the design, evaluation and delivery of the Pain Management Programme RESTORE, including assessment of suitable clients and routine collection of outcome data.

11. To identify on the basis of the exclusion and inclusion criteria for the service clients referred for pain management psychological assessment whose needs are best served by other local services rather than or in addition to the MSK Pain management service e.g IAPT or CMHT services. To liaise as appropriate with these teams making onward referrals and/or working alongside these teams as appropriate.

12. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients on caseload and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

General

• To maintain registration with the Health Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist.
• To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.
• To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of psychology and related disciplines.
• To maintain and promulgate the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society, Health Professions Council and Trust policies and procedures.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.

Management responsibilities

• To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service. Advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to the service, in the form of qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
• To exercise shared responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.
• To participate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, graduate, trainees and qualified clinical psychologists.
• To support day to day management of the psychological therapy staff within the service.
• To be accountable to the Consultant Psychologist and Service Lead.

Teaching, Training and Supervision

• To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to qualified psychological therapists/ practitioner psychologists within the Trust.
• To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychological therapists/ practitioner psychologists as appropriate.
• To provide clinical placements for trainee psychological therapists/ practitioner psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
• To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of teams/ services for their provision of psychologically informed interventions.
• To fully participate in Clinical Supervision, and performance development reviews and remain professionally and clinically accountable to the Consultant Psychologist for the pain psychology service.

Research and Service Evaluation

1. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the services operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit, ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high quality care.

2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other staff.

3. To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.

4. To contribute to the development, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of the Directorates and Trusts operational policies and services.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate Doctoral level training and qualification in Clinical, Counselling or Health Psychology, as accredited by the BPS and recognised by HCPC.
• Professional registration with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by professional bodies for Practitioner Psychologists, relevant to the post.
• Post-Doctoral training in specific theoretical models e.g MBCT, Mindfulness, CFT ACT and/or psychological specialities e.g. Health Psychology.
• Completed training/CPD in clinical leadership and/or clinical supervision.

Knowledge and Skills

• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management.
• A commitment to and the evaluation of services and enthusiasm for audit, research and service evaluation.
• Highly specialist knowledge of at least 2 specialised psychological therapies e.g: CBT, ACT, CFT, MBCT.

Personal

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of emotive and distressing problems.
• Enthusiasm for working within MDT and with patients with chronic pain.

Experience

• Substantial assessed experience of working as a qualified practitioner psychologist at a highly specialist level.
• Experience working in physical health settings with clients with chronic physical health conditions.
• Experience of teaching, training and providing clinical supervision.
• Experience of leading long term condition management groups.
• Experience of the application of psychological theory in the management of chronic pain.

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.