Job description
Assistant Psychologist, Band 4
Fixed Term, full time - 37.5 hours per week
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an Assistant Psychologist position on one of the working age adult acute inpatient wards in Green Parks House, Princess Royal Hospital, Orpington. The posts will work alongside the existing Clinical Psychologists in the unit.
Green Parks House is the mental health inpatient unit attached to Princess Royal Hospital for the London Borough of Bromley. It comprises of 3 mixed gender wards. Each ward is staffed by a multi-disciplinary team of nursing, health care assistants, lived experience practitioners, psychiatry, OT and a ward dedicated clinical psychologist. The unit clinical psychologists will provide the post holder with regular clinical supervision, consultation and support.
The successful applicant will join Norman ward team to help develop, facilitate and contribute to the therapeutic day on the wards and biopsychosocial model of care. This will involve the delivery of psychologically informed interventions to ward service users in the form of groups, individualised care plans and associated assessment and interventions. This would include model based interventions and neurocognitive assessments. The aim of the posts are to develop and contribute to the ward therapeutic day, increase access to psychological interventions in the acute wards, increase the number of activities on the ward and increase the skill mix in the acute setting.
The post holder will join the shift teams of qualified nurses and health care assistants to contribute to the running of the therapeutic day with specific capacity to deliver psychological interventions, which may be individual, group or involve family and carers. Other tasks may include clinical information gathering/liaison and analysis to inform a multi-disciplinary formulation, intervention delivery and audit and specific evidence based psychosocial interventions within the scope of postgraduate qualification.
The posts will be 9-5pm 5 days a week - this is negotiable if necessary. Please see the Job Description and Person Specification for more details.
For further information please contact Dr Hannah Green, Principal Clinical Psychologist, Green Parks House on 01689 880000.
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust 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 new values:
- We’re Kind
- We’re Fair
- We Listen
- We Care
1. To undertake protocol based psychological assessments of clients applying psychological, including 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 client’s care under the supervision of a qualified clinical psychologist.
2. To assist in the formulation and delivery of care plans involving the psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems, under the supervision of a qualified professional psychologist, in both community and in-patient/residential settings.
3. To assist in the coordination and running of therapeutic groups or clinical projects.
4. To work with other staff to assess or support service users in community or inpatient settings and contribute to multidiscipliniary discussions and reviews.
5. To assist in the development of a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings where care takes place.
6. To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings.
Teaching, training and supervision
1. In common with all clinical psychologists, to receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines
2. To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS over and above that provided within the principal service area where the postholder is employed.
3.To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties
4. To contribute to the training and support of other staff in psychological care.
Management, recruitment and service development
1. To assist in the design and implementation of service development projects within the service as required.1. To attend meetings in which service developments are planned and discussed.
IT responsibilities (clinical)
1 To create graphs or charts to collate or summarise data
2 To assist in producing visual material or user friendly information for interventions with clients
3 To update Rio electronic patient records in line with trust policy
Research and service evaluation
1. To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects.
2. To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes.
3. To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist qualified clinical psychologists in evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
General
1. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholders professional and team/operational manager(s).
2. To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.
3. To prepare test materials and visual aids as required.
4. To undertake specific administrative duties as required.
5. To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required from time to time by their Psychology Manager.