Assistant Clinical Psychologist - Burns Service

at  Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

We are looking to recruit a full-time Assistant Psychologist to join the Burns Psychology Team at the London Regional Burns Service based at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. We provide psychological support to current and historical patients of all ages – from neonates to centenarians. This may include families, especially parents of burn-injured children, and the social networks who have been, or will be, supporting patients to manage having experienced a burn and the challenges this may bring. Our usual adult/paediatric caseload ratio is approximately 2:1. We also provide support, training and consultation to other burns and non-burns professionals. This position would especially suit someone looking for a broad variety of working opportunities in terms of patient demographics (age, ethnicity, gender, culture, language), problem presentation, length of intervention (brief to long-term) and setting (inpatient, outpatient, charity and community-based).
The successful applicant will have contact with patients or service users across the lifespan. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working in our healthcare settings.
The postholder will be at the centre of the psychology team, embedded within the adult and paediatric burns MDT, working closely and collaboratively to deliver high quality, evidence based and effective psychological care to burns patients at all stages of their injury and recovery.
The role primarily involves supporting a team of practitioner psychologists to deliver a specialist applied psychology service onsite at the burns unit and to assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work. In addition the postholder will provide face to face clinical work, under direct guidance and supervision, including the provision of specialist psychological screening, assessment, therapy, advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers.
Please note: applications that do not specifically reference how the candidate meets the criteria in the Job Description and Person Specification will not be considered. All applicants must also explicitly indicate in their application that they have understood the following:
A) the role is in person and onsite at the Burns Service Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Fulham Road and
B) that they are able to regularly attend handover meetings onsite which start at 8 AM.
The psychology service sits within Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Burns Service and works with individuals under their care. The postholder will work within the multi-disciplinary Burns Service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and will also have links with the Adult Clinical Health Psychology and Paediatric Psychology teams. The wider Adult Clinical Health Psychology Team work across a number of specialities including Bariatric Surgery, ICU, Sexual Health, IBD, Pain and Staff Support. The Paediatric Psychology Service provide support to specific specialities including gastroenterology, diabetes, orthopaedics, cranio-facial, oncology and NICU, as well as other health conditions. As part of both of these wider teams the successful candidate will have opportunity to network with colleagues and to be part of regular programs of teaching.

Clinical and Client Care

• To provide psychological assessments for clients in the burns service under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist 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.
• To provide protocol based individual psychological interventions for clients in the Burns Service including psychoeducation, appearance distress management and trauma symptom management.
• To arrange, schedule and provide protocol-based group psychological interventions for clients in the Burns Service.
• To assist the psychologists in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials.
• To assist, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist, 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.
• To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings.
• To arrange, schedule and co-facilitate training to carers or employees of partner agencies in order to support the clinical work with clients .

Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

• To contribute to the effective working of the Burns Service by registering new referrals; creating databases to track processes or progress through pathways and keeping them up to date; contributing to the training and support of other staff in developing and providing psychological care of clients.
• To act in a manner that supports a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• To participate in the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

Policy and service development

• To follow policies and procedures in own area of work
• To participate in the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

Care or management of resources

• To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
• To ensure that the post-holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting supplies as needed.
• To be responsible for safe-keeping of equipment or stock provided to the post holder and informing the supervising psychologist or manager when stock requires replenishing (may apply to psychometric tests, postage stamps, specialised stationery etc.).

Teaching and Training

• To participate in demonstrating work methods to newly recruited Assistant Psychologists and to support their development of necessary skills.
• To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations or published articles.
• To arrange, schedule and co-facilitate training to employees of the Trust or employees of partner agencies in order to support service improvement.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

• To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
• Under the supervision of the practitioner psychologist to maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.
• To maintain data bases and enter data and perform analyses and produce reports.

Research and development

• To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects to inform the service Psychologist and others in the development of Trust psychology and other services, training provision and research activities.
• To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes.
• To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist in the development in the Trust of evidence based practice.
• Under guidance to conduct surveys with service users and carers to gather views on service provision

Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

• To receive regular clinical and professional supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines
• To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
• To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties.
• To undertake personal training relevant to the post in agreement with the supervising psychologist and the manager.

General

• To travel to teaching venues, support group meetings and in person psychology meetings as appropriate and across the Trust when required.
• To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group, and follow trust policies relating to its management
• To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations including challenging behaviour, verbal and physical abuse, patient pain, and distress and to support others involved in such situations.
• To work flexibly which may include offering some regular commitment to early morning MDT meetings (8AM), late clinics or Saturday working, within the overall Job Plan.
• 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 postholder’s professional and team/operational manager(s).
• To undertake specific administrative duties as required.
• To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required from time to time by their Psychology Manager.

Please refer the Job description for details