We are currently recruiting for a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join our Liaison Psychiatry Service in Hammersmith & Fulham. You will be joining an energetic multi-disciplinary team that covers a wide range of specialist services across two acute trust hospital sites at Charing Cross Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital.

This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic and dedicated Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join a dynamic and growing Psychiatric Liaison Service. As a senior member of the Liaison MDT, you will help contribute to the delivery of a comprehensive psychological service within a general hospital setting.

The post will work across the adult age span and so offers an interesting and diverse range of clinical work providing psychological assessments, formulations, and treatments for services users experiencing the full range of psychological distress, within the Emergency Department or who are inpatients in the general hospital.

*This posts attracts up to £8000 relocation costs*

Main duties of the job

You will also work with Europe's largest renal centre that has a tertiary service for both regional and national referrals as well being a key professional in the Altruistic Donor Clinic within our service. You will have the enthusiasm and experience of working with patients with comorbid physical health conditions, medically unexplained symptoms and high intensity users of acute healthcare.

You will welcome the challenge of helping the Liaison Psychiatry Service in developing psychological services within a physical health care setting, and be interested in innovatively applying evidence-based treatments to meet the needs of our service users.

You will contribute a psychological perspective on the Psychiatric Liaison MDT development and delivery and have many varied opportunities for supervision, consultation, leadership, and service development. You will also work closely with the Clinical Psychologist in our sister service to develop the specialist role across Liaison Psychiatry. The successful applicant will be well supported and have dedicated supervision by Clinical and Counselling Psychology colleagues within West London NHS Trust. You will also be well supported by the Consultant Psychiatrist and Team Manager both of whom will offer supervision and support in clinical and operational matters. You will also have opportunity to link in with psychologists across the acute trust in a range of specialities.

About us

West London NHS Trust is one of the most diverse providers of mental health, community and social care in the UK.

Our 3,982 staff care for people in hospital and in the community, helping them to recover and go on to lead full and productive lives. We aim to be the best organisation of our kind in the country.

We provide care and treatment for more than 800,000 people living in the London boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow, delivering services in the community (at home, in GP surgeries and care homes), hospital, specialist clinics and forensic (secure) units.

We'rerated good overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Together, we're committed to promoting hope and wellbeing, working with patients, service users, carers, families and partners across the communities we serve.

We are keen to ensure that our workforce reflects the community it serves, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability, LGBTQ+ and experience of mental illness.

Job description Job responsibilities

All duties will be carried in collaboration with the senior management team of the Hammersmith and Fulham Liaison Psychiatry Service. The post-holder has a responsibility to perform all tasks within the values of West London NHS Trust. Under such direction and with these conditions, the duties will be:

• To provide specialist psychological screening / assessments of patients referred to the Liaison Psychiatry team, 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.
• To formulate, implement and review 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.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of brief psychological interventions for patients, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• 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 patient, family or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of patients.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals (including non-mental health professionals,) contributing directly to the patients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• 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 agencies serving the patient group.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients 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 with the aim of overall risk reduction.
• 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.
• To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
• To attend and contribute to appropriate MDT meetings.
• To assist in the coordination and running of therapeutic groups, if the service model has capacity for this.
• To work in collaboration and partnership with the patient, their carers and families, the liaison psychiatry MDT and other agencies, as appropriate, modelling high quality care.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

Person Specification Qualifications and Training Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical or counseling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, or post graduate training in another core mental health profession (nursing, Occupational therapy) plus l post graduate diploma or higher degree in CBT. OR Accredited as a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist by the British Association of Cognitive & Behavioural Psychotherapies (BABCP) or nearing completion of accreditation process.
• Professional registration with the appropriate Health and Care Professions Council, if applicable to core professional training.

Desirable

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Postgraduate CBT Diploma.

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
• 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 working with people with mental health problems
• Demonstrate further specialist training / experience through having received clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical / counselling psychologist, or an alternative agreed by the Head of Psychology and Psychological Therapies Services

Desirable

• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of the application of clinical /counselling psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working with liaison psychiatry and/or acute hospital settings
• Experience of using structured techniques for promotion of health behaviour change such as motivational interviewing
• Experience of running structured psycho-educational group-based interventions
• Experience of working within a multi-cultural framework

Knowledge and Skills Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
• 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

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
• Knowledge of NHS primary and secondary care structures

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

222-LS-PMS-78-G