Specialist Clinical Psychologist

at  The Christie NHS Foundation Trust

The successful candidate will lead a specialized project within The Christie Psycho-Oncology Service on a fixed-term contract for 23 months. This role involves working 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday, from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, excluding bank holidays. Funded by The Christie Charity, the role focuses on developing a Trust-Wide Mental Health Strategy to enhance psychological support for oncology patients. Responsibilities include conducting a comprehensive gap analysis across various disease groups, identifying unmet mental health needs, and creating evidence-based psychological programs to address these gaps.
The post holder will manage a modest clinical caseload, providing specialized psychological assessments and interventions for patients with complex physical and mental health needs. They will collaborate with the principal psychologist and the multidisciplinary team to offer supervision, training, and support, ensuring the delivery of care that adheres to guidelines.
This role requires autonomous work within professional guidelines and involves contributing to research, audits, and policy development. The post holder will also evaluate service outcomes, identify appropriate clinical measures, and gather data for continuous improvement. This position is pivotal in enhancing psychological care and improving the overall patient experience throughout the cancer journey.
Lead and execute a gap analysis to identify deficiencies in psychological support across different cancer types.
Develop and implement protocols to gather information on gaps in care.
Identify evidence-based priorities and pathways of care to improve psychological interventions.
Manage and develop the Psycho-Oncology project, including working with an Assistant Psychologist.
Analyse modifiable stressors in patient care and make recommendations for psychological strategies.
Implement evidence-based psychological programs and support the development of improved supportive oncology services.
Maintain a modest clinical caseload, providing specialized psychological assessment and evidence-based interventions for patients with complex needs.
Communicate sensitively about emotionally challenging topics, including terminal illness.
Collaborate with the principal psychologist and other MDT members on case discussions and psychological aspects of patient care.
Provide level 2 supervision and training in psychological interventions for clinical staff.
Liaise with wider mental health services and ensure effective signposting.
Participate in the Greater Manchester Cancer Psychological Support pathways board and Physical Health Psychology Speciality within the mental health trust.
Utilize research skills for audit and policy development.
Identify and evaluate clinical outcome measures and service evaluation data.
The Christie is one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, treating over 60,000 patients a year. We are based in Manchester and serve a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 15% patients are referred to us from other parts of the country.
We provide radiotherapy through one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world; chemotherapy on site and through 14 other hospitals; highly specialist surgery for complex and rare cancer; and a wide range of support and diagnostic services. We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years.
We run one of the largest early clinical trial units in Europe with over 300 trials every year. Cancer research in Manchester, most of which is undertaken on the Christie site, has been officially ranked the best in the UK.

Clinical
Contribute to the service delivery and target objectives/priorities of the Psycho-oncology service and the pilot project, to ensure the most efficient and effective utilisation and contribution of psychological knowledge and practice.
Complete, under clinical supervision, specialist psychological assessments of people referred to the Psycho-oncology Service, including the administration of self-report measures, rating scales and semi structured interviews.
Write reports following assessments to clients and referrers and, where appropriate, other family members and other professionals involved in clients’ care. To ensure adequate written clinical records and related administration are complete and up to date.
Assist in the delivery of intervention plans involving the psychological treatment and management of a client’s problems, under the supervision of the lead psychologist. This may involve aspects of psychological therapy for trauma.
Attend and contribute to appropriate multidisciplinary meetings.
Research and Service Evaluation
Under the direction of the Psycho-Oncology clinical and service leads and in line with trust policy, the post holder will assist the team to develop the Trust Mental Health Strategy.
The postholder’s duties, under the guidance of the senior team are to:
Identify key disease group priorities for the gap analysis
Jointly develop systematic protocols for the pilot to identify patient experience across disease pathways for data collection and analysis
Develop the mechanisms to enable service users and patients by experience to be involved in informing the pilot
Report the findings of the pilot in relation to clinical outcomes and project evaluation data during the project.
Identify protocols and pathways for improving patient outcomes based on the evidence gathered
Utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice and systematic research protocols
Develop pathways and protocols with the wider team to improve outcomes
Produce recommendations to the senior team.
Identify, prepare and with the support of the senior team, present key aspects of the project
Develop knowledge of applied and academic psychology, through regular literature searches, reading and personal study.
Teaching, Training and Support
Receive regular clinical professional supervision from a qualified clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
Support the delivery of training to staff within the team and to staff in other services in the wider network (e.g. Talking Therapies staff).
Provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the patient group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
Provide Level 2 supervision to clinical nurse specialists where appropriate
I.T. Responsibilities
To enter, integrate and extract data using a computer system and to present information in a variety of formats for dissemination when required, including using an electronic patient record system.
To undertake data collection, the production of reports and summaries using I.T. and statistical programmes.
To assist in the identification of any omissions or inconsistencies concerning clinical activity data and to liaise directly with clinical staff to correct this.
To utilise basic word processing skills in order to produce reports and other communications