Job summary
There is an exciting opportunity for a practitioner psychologist to work in a band 8b role in the Liaison Psychiatry for Older People (LPOP) service. The LPOP team work at the interface between medical/physical health and mental health. They offer assessments and interventions to people with mental health needs on medical wards across University Hospital Llandough (UHL) and University Hospital of Wales (UHW) and work closely with medical and nursing teams.
This post would be well suited to a psychologist with an interest in working with clinical health psychology presentations and with people in their later life who require complex formulation around physical and mental health. There are opportunities for the psychologist to be offering psychological and cognitive assessments.
The successful candidate will play an important role within the LPOP leadership team alongside the Consultant Psychiatrist, Team Lead and Clinical Lead and will help in supporting this proactive team with service development and improvement endeavours.
Main duties of the job
The successful candidate will offer psychological input to the LPOP team in the following ways:
Direct clinical work
1. Offering psychological and cognitive assessment, formulation and brief psychological intervention where relevant
2. Joint working with Occupational Therapist, Specialist Liaison Nurses and/or Consultant Psychiatrist/medical colleagues, all of whom work within the LPOP MDT.
Indirect clinical work
3. Complex case discussion and team formulation
4. Working closely with the clinical lead and team lead to offer teaching and training to the LPOP team and ward teams where relevant
5. Offering informal team consultation regarding complex presentations
6. Supervision of the Assistant Psychologist
7. Supporting with service development and improvement projects
The successful candidate will be a member of the Older Adult Psychology which has psychologists and therapists working across a range of different areas including Dementia services (including the Memory Team and the Young Onset Dementia service), Mental Health Services for Older People, Elderly Care Assessment Service and Parkinson's and Movement Disorder service, Stroke Services, Neuropsychiatry and Care Home Liaison.
The specialty is part of a large and progressive health board wide Directorate of Psychology and Psychological Therapies. Continued professional development is strongly encouraged and supported as is excellent opportunity for supervision and training.
About us
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is one of the largest Integrated Health Boards in the UK, employing over 17,000 staff, providing over 100 specialist services. Working across 6 hospital sites, we have a diverse range of career opportunities to offer. Serving over 500,000 people living in Cardiff and the Vale, we are focussed on the health and care needs of our local population whilst working with our partners to develop regional services. Together we are committed to improving health outcomes for everyone, delivering excellent care and support.
Our mission is "Living Well, Caring Well, Working Together", and our vision is that every person's chance of leading a healthy life should be equal. Our 10-year transformation and improvement strategy, Shaping Our Future Wellbeing, is our chance to work collaboratively with the public and our workforce to make our health board more sustainable for the future.
Job description
Job responsibilities
You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click Apply now to view in Trac
The ability to speak Welsh is desirable for this post; English and/or Welsh speakers are equally welcome to apply.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
8. Good Honours degree in Psychology with eligibility for Graduate Basis for Chartership (GBC) with the BPS.
9. Post-graduate Doctorate in Clinical/Counselling Psychology accredited by the HCPC (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 as accredited by the BPS).
10. HCPC registration as a practitioner psychologist.
Desirable
11. Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialist areas of psychological practice.
12. Evidence of peer reviewed publications, presentations at conferences, or similar contributions.
Experience
Essential
13. Substantial and demonstrable post-qualification experience of working as a HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist with experience working within Neuropsychiatric services.
14. Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings and maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
15. Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified healthcare professional and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
16. Demonstrable evidence of significant specialist clinical supervision within a scientist-practitioner framework, including supervision, group supervision and case presentations.
17. Experience of teaching, training and professional and clinical supervision
Desirable
18. Experience of working with service users as co-producers
Skills
Essential
19. Skills in the use of highly complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
20. Ability to use highest level of interpersonal and communication skills to convey and receive highly complex/sensitive information effectively, requiring empathy and reassurance, in a highly emotive atmosphere and the ability to overcome psychological resistance to potentially threatening information, whilst maintaining high degree of professionalism at all times.
21. Able to take responsibility for managing and providing a specialist service, or systematically providing part of a larger service
22. Ability to make clinical and service-related judgments involving complex facts requiring analysis, interpretation and comparison of several options
23. Ability to plan and organise a range of clinical or service-related activities and programmes
Desirable
24. Knowledge of theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific groups that are difficult to treat.
25. High level of knowledge of theory and practice of at least two specialist psychological therapies.
26. Knowledge of legislation in relation to client group and mental health.
Knowledge
Essential
27. Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology.
28. Evidence of significant post-qualification continuing professional development as recommended by the HCPC and BPS.
29. Well-developed specialist knowledge of clinical/counselling psychology theory and practice, assessment, and the application of specialised psychological therapies related to the needs of patients within Neuropsychiatric services
30. Specialist knowledge of psychometric test construction, development, validation, administration and clinical interpretation of the results.
31. Formal Training and supervision of other psychologists.
Desirable
32. Awareness of ethnic diversity issues.
Personal Qualities
Essential
33. Commitment to and interest in working with people with older adults with severe and complex mental health difficulties and/or dementia.
34. Willingness to participate in continuing professional development & psychologists working in similar team settings
35. Requirement to undertake frequent exposure to emotionally distressing and traumatic situations.
Desirable
36. Ability to speak Welsh and willingness to use in a work context