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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. Communication

• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
• To liaise closely with multi-professional colleagues within the appropriate therapy team.
• To liaise closely with the adult cystic fibrosis consultants and clinical specialist professionals around patient management.
• To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area.

2. Patient / client care (both direct and indirect)

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the clinical health psychology service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and 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 patient’s care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families, and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining several provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options, considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family, or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.
• To be professionally and legally accountable for your clinical work

3. People Management

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a Consultant Clinical Psychologist  and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychology, whereby the amount and nature of such experience has been agreed with the appropriate Therapy Lead.
• To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.
• To contribute to pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology as appropriate
• To develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.
• To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate
• To contribute to the development, maintenance, and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post-holder’s professional and therapy team lead.
• To deputise for the Therapy Lead as required and represent the profession, or Directorate or Trust at specified meetings or committees.

4. Policy and Service Development

• To support the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service. This includes advising service need and those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the therapy team’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical / counselling / health psychology and related disciplines.
• To participate, as appropriate, in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees, qualified psychologists, and multi-disciplinary colleagues.
• To attend the regular Therapy Team meeting, clinical and professional meetings of Psychological Medicine and other directorate or Trust meetings.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies, and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
• To have individual responsibility for adhering to Directorate and Trust policies and procedures, including mandatory training.
• To provide specialist advice and training to teaching programmes that support the multi-disciplinary team’s CPD and learning regarding the psychological care of CF / PCD / respiratory patients.

 5. Research

• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research. This includes the provision of advice and support to medical, nursing and therapy staff engaging in research related to the psychological care of patients and their families.
• To initiate clinical effectiveness activity, including audit, QI and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.
• To familiarise themselves with, and to comply with, the Trust’s requirements on research governance.

6. Information management

• To maintain appropriate computer and manual clinical records in line with Trust / local policy.
• To engage in relevant computer and IT training as required, including Information Governance mandatory training.
• To input and maintain appropriate electronic and statistical data and provide this to the Therapy Lead/Director when necessary.
• To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.

7. Other duties

• To undertake any other duties commensurate with the grade as requested.
• To abide by the NHS Code of conduct, the Trust’s Core behaviours for staff and all other Trust policies, codes, and practices, including standing financial instructions, research governance, clinical governance, patient and public involvement and health and safety.

This job description is intended as a basic guide to the scope and responsibilities of the post and is not exhaustive. It will be subject to regular review and amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.