Liaison Psychologist

at  Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

We are looking to recruit a motivated clinical psychologist to join the Liaison Psychiatry service. This post would suit a psychologist who thrives in the inpatient setting and is looking for an opportunity to develop a new service for people attending the acute Trust with complex mental health needs.
The Liaison Psychology service will provide specialist input to the Liaison Psychiatry service, while being embedded in a large Clinical Health Psychology service, including specialities in Bariatric Surgery, Burns, HIV & Sexual Health, Intensive Care, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Pain and Staff Psychology. The CHP service has a strong commitment to embedding core values of equality, diversity and inclusion at the core of our work.
We are committed to improving access to services, striving for equity for all. Continuing professional development is actively supported, as well as hosting trainees from the North Thames Doctoral courses.
We especially welcome applications from candidates with the valuable experience of the diverse social and cultural communities the Trust serves, as we are seeking to ensure our psychology staffing has greater diversity and better represents local communities.
The postholder will be supported to develop their career and flourish as a valued member of the psychology staff group. There are also a number of support systems within the Trust including staff peer networks.
The postholder will take a lead in designing the Liaison Psychology service. This is a newly created post, welcomed by the Liaison Psychiatry team, as well as the wider Clinical Health Psychology service. The role will be on site, although hybrid models of working could be explored.
The postholder will provide specialist psychological assessment and brief therapeutic interventions in the acute setting. The postholder will offer advice and consultation on service users’ psychological care.
Clinical responsibilities include provision of highly specialised psychological assessments and interventions for service users and specialist consultation for psychiatric and hospital based staff. The postholder will be responsible for systematic governance of psychological practice within Liaison Psychiatry.
Education responsibilities will be a key component, including leading on engaging hospital based staff with education of how to deliver psychologically informed care in the acute setting.
The postholder will contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
The postholder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the areas served by the team/service.
The post holder will work autonomously within BPS and HCPC guidelines and codes of conduct, and Trust policies.
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) is a great place to work for Psychological Professions. We employ a wide range of Psychological Professions. We value the rich, diverse contributions to our services that our great staff make. We offer our Psychological Professions opportunities across a range of clinical services, in the most diverse areas in London.
As a Trust, we are committed to investing in our staff through a range of initiatives, both profession-specific and organisation wide. We have partnered with Bespoke and Contextual Consulting to provide some of the profession specific CPD, alongside additional CPD sessions we commission as part of CNWL CPD programme for Psychological Professions. CNWL also has seven established staff networks supporting a range of individual needs.
The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. 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 on our healthcare settings.

KR 1 Clinical and Client Care

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessments, formulations and interventions for clients under the care of the Liaison Psychiatry service, often in busy departments, such as Accident and Emergency.
• To provide brief psychological interventions with distressed service users, whilst waiting for allocation of an admission bed.
• To provide culturally appropriate psychological interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.
• To assess and monitor risk and draw up appropriate risk management plans, including supporting the ward based team to implement effective safety planning.
• To provide limited outpatient follow-up for service users attending Accident and Emergency, who might benefit from a more detailed psychological assessment and brief therapeutic interventions.
• Where appropriate, to act as named worker and take responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans and co-ordination of multi-professional meetings.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

• To contribute to the effective working of the team or service and to a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• To contribute to the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.
• To be proactive in challenging discrimination and support the development of culturally competent services.
• To advise other members of the service on specialist psychological care of clients, including drawing on formulation skills.
• To liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

KR 3 Policy and service development

• To implement policies and procedures in own area of work, and to propose improvements or beneficial changes.
• To contribute to service development through undertaking and participating in appropriate projects.
• To contribute to the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

KR 4 Care or management of resources

• To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
• To ensure that the postholder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting or ordering supplies as needed.

KR 5 Management and supervision

• To supervise trainee psychologists within own area of specialism.
• To provide supervision for the psychological work of other multi-disciplinary staff as appropriate.

KR 6 Teaching and Training

• To co-design with inpatient teams a psychoeducation package for ward based teams, on how to embed psychologically informed and trauma informed care. This could include a range of psychological areas, according to clinical need.
• To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the Liaison Psychiatry service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychology and acute mental health, and by implementing knowledge gained in practice.
• To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

KR 7 Record-keeping and Information Governance

• To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
• To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.

KR 8 Research and development

• To initiate, undertake, support and supervise regular complex service evaluation and audits.
• To develop a highly specialist follow-up clinic for service users presenting to Accident & Emergency.
• To provide expertise in a specialist research area which will contribute to the Liaison Psychiatry service.
• To initiate and implement the development of outcome measurement and assessment and assist other staff in the implementation of same.

KR 9 Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

• To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from a more senior psychologist according to HCPC and Trust guidelines.
• To ensure own Continuing Professional Development in line with BPS and Trust Personal Development Plan requirements and the HCPC ‘Standards for Continuing Professional Development’.
• To maintain an up-to-date knowledge of current developments in professional and clinical practice and of relevant legislation and policies.
• To comply with the HCPC ‘Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics’ and ‘Standards of Proficiency’, and ensure professional development in line with these.
• To adhere to the BPS’s Professional Practice Guidelines and Trust policies and procedures.

KR 10 General

• To travel 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 and to support others involved in such situations.