Senior Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

We are committed to helping our staff balance their work and home lives and ensure they feel supported, valued and appreciated. While you care for our patients and clients, we’ll take care of you. We offer many different ways of helping staff including career development opportunities, flexible working, good annual leave and pension schemes, health and wellbeing packages, and financial support systems. Joining the Trust also allows you access to a number of saving options via our salary sacrifice schemes and a wide range of discount opportunities with retailers and service providers.

Job overview

We are delighted to advertise this exciting new post to develop and pilot a service for patients undergoing Blood Stem Cell Transplant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust (STHFT). Alongside this, the role involves providing a clinical service to more established psychological services within cancer and palliative care.

We aim to attract a committed, diverse, and talented workforce who are passionate about delivering psychological care within an acute hospital setting and adapting approaches to meet the needs of our services and service users. In return, we offer a supportive, dynamic work setting where you can link with colleagues and develop your career.

As a department, we recognise that diversity of workforce extends our skills, experiences, and ideas, thereby adding value and creativity to our services. The department has an active Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) group and welcomes applications from candidates from all backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community. In our latest staff survey, 97% of staff report feeling valued and cared for and that their role makes a difference.

Please see the attachment “Department overview” for more details about working with us.

Main duties of the job

This postholder will primarily work into the Clinical Haematology team based at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital which cares for patients undergoing stem cell transplant (SCT) for both malignant blood cancer diseases or non-malignant disease.

The post is a pilot service providing specialist input to improve and maintain patients’ wellbeing and engagement with SCT treatment at all stages of the commissioned clinical pathway. This includes pre SCT screening, assessments and intervention if needed, support as inpatients during SCT and post-transplant psychological support and care. The role of the SCT Psychological Therapist therefore involves specialist assessment, treatment, planning, screening, implementation and monitoring of outcomes with patients and potentially their families and carers.

The post holder would be an integrated member of the SCT MDT, contributing a psychological perspective to patient care at all stages of the patient pathway. Working with patients and team members, there is potential to have a far-reaching positive impact both directly and indirectly, making a huge difference to outcomes and quality of life for patients requiring a bone marrow transplant.

The post holder will also become part of the cancer and palliative care psychology team providing a service where established patient pathways exist such as breast cancer, head & neck cancer and haemato-oncology.

Working for our organisation

You will be working for an organisation which values and respects all of its staff and the community it serves. The Trust is a leader in the NHS and research sectors and provides excellent benefits for its staff. This includes commitments to professional development but also many policies to support employees in balancing their personal and professional lives.

As a member of the department, you would be part of a substantial, experienced, and enthusiastic team; benefitting from inhouse professional development including clinical supervision, special interest groups and opportunities to engage in our wider projects. The department is committed to supporting our staff and have a well-supported Staff Engagement and Wellbeing Group. The Trust has a flexible working policy, allowing for a range of flexible / hybrid working options as appropriate to the service needs. The attached document outlines our department strategy.

As a dynamic department, we have seen considerable growth in recent years and have a portfolio of new service developments. Continuing professional development is strongly supported, as appropriate to the individual’s and organisation’s requirements.

The department has strong links with the Sheffield, Leeds and Hull DClinPsy courses. We also offer placements to trainees on DCounsPsy courses.

When completing your application please ensure that you clearly demonstrate how you meet the role criteria.

This vacancy is advertised on a fixed term contract basis for a period of 20 months due to the post being externally funded. The fixed term contract status of the post holder will be reviewed in accordance with the Trust's legal obligations regarding fixed term contracts taking into consideration the ongoing source of the external funding and the requirement for the post to be maintained.

Please also note any secondment must first be agreed with your current line manager.

Person specification

Education and Qualifications

Essential criteria

1. Doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996), or counselling psychology as accredited by the HCPC, including models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, as accredited by the British Psychological Society
2. Professional registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
3. Eligible for Practitioner Full Membership of the BPS Divisions of Clinical or Counselling Psychology

Desirable criteria

1. Pre-qualification training and qualifications in other fields of applied psychology

Experience

Essential criteria

1. Significant 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.
2. Significant experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups including with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity
3. Significant experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care
4. Working clinically in health and medical settings
5. Working with people affected by health-related psychological problems.
6. Working effectively with other professionals in multidisciplinary settings.

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of working with MDT groups
2. Experience of working into an inpatient and/or outpatient Health Psychology Service
3. Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision, including to healthcare staff.
4. Experience of the application of clinical or counselling psychology in different cultural contexts
5. Experiences of working with young adults and adults in a physical health setting

Further Training

Essential criteria

1. Further specialist training / experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a clinical or counselling psychologist over a minimum of 24 months
2. Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical or counselling fields of psychology
3. Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS and HCPC.
4. Formal training in supervision of other psychological practitioners

Skills and Knowledge

Essential criteria

1. Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention, and management.
2. Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
3. Skills in working effectively with other professionals in multidisciplinary settings
4. Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
5. Skills in working with diversity.
6. Ability/skills in working through interpreters.
7. Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
8. Knowledge of legislation and national policies and guidance in relation to the patient group, and physical and mental health
9. Specialist knowledge of psychological, physical health and medical interventions relating acute physical health care
10. Ability to establish and maintain professional credibility at all levels of the organisation

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
2. Experience of significantly developing or transforming a service model.
3. Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, chronic or terminal illness, complex psychological or physical problems, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria

1. Highly developed ability to communicate effectively (orally and in writing) highly complex and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
2. Ability to manage time effectively and prioritise workload
3. Positive attitude, sensitivity, and commitment to working with patient groups affected by medical/physical health conditions
4. Ability to deal with frequent exposure to highly distressing or highly emotional circumstances
5. Ability to maintain intense concentration on a frequent basis