Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical Psychology
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job share
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 287-RMED-456-25
- Employer
- Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Aintree University Hospital
- Town
- Liverpool
- Salary
- £55,690 - £62,682 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 11/12/2025 08:00
Employer heading
Senior Clinical Psychologist
Band 8a
Job overview
Supported by the Trust Professional Lead for Psychology, the psychologist will contribute to developing, delivering and evaluating psychology services in the A&E department.
Must be willing to travel between sites serving patients of LUHFT as required.
Main duties of the job
To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources.
To formulate plans for, and to implement, psychological interventions based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and evidence of efficacy
To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options.
To address the needs of carers as appropriate.
To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for psychological treatment and discharge, communicating and liaising with referrers and others regularly.
To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals.
To ensure that all members of the clinical teams have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of patients, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.
To undertake and advise on risk assessment and risk management.
To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans.
To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the clinical teams .
To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the patient group to relevant staff and agencies outside the Trust.
Working for our organisation
Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust comprises Aintree University Hospital, Broadgreen Hospital & Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
We are part of NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, formed on 1 Nov 2024 from the coming together of LUHFT and Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust. The Group was born from a shared aim to improve the care we provide our patients.
UHLG is one of the largest employers in the region, with over 16,800 colleagues dedicated to caring for our communities - from birth and beyond.
For the 630,000 people across Merseyside, we are their local NHS. We provide general and emergency hospital care, alongside highly specialised regional services for more than two million people in the North West.
Aintree University Hospital is the single receiving site for adult major trauma patients in Cheshire and Merseyside and hosts a number of regional services including an award-winning stroke facility. Broadgreen Hospital is home to elective surgical, diagnostic and treatment services, together with specialist patient rehabilitation. Liverpool Women’s Hospital specialises in the health of women and babies, delivering over 7,200 babies in the UK’s largest single site maternity hospital each year. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital is the largest hospital in the country to provide inpatients with 100% single bedrooms and focuses on complex planned care and specialist services.
For roles at Liverpool Women’s, visit their careers page.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
To constribute to planning, developing and coordinating psychology services in A&E.
To offer consultation, training and guidance on psychological aspects of care to staff working within A&E.
To work directly with patients identified as appropriate for the service.
To offer focused staff support where appropriate.
To supervise directly the clinical work of relevant junior staff.
To contribute to representation of psychology on relevant local bodies.
To contribute a psychological perspective to multidisciplinary and multi-agency planning and development .
To contribute advice to Trusts on the systematic governance of psychology practice for patients of the service.
In the belief that the service will have much to learn from and contribute to the development of services nationally, the psychologist will be encouraged to develop and maintain network links with colleagues working in similar settings across the UK.
To provide clinical and professional supervision to psychologists working in the service where appropriate.
To provide specialist clinical placements for trainee clinical, health or counselling psychologists and other psychological practitioners as appropriate, ensuring that they acquire the necessary clinical and research skills to doctoral level where appropriate, and competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good psychological practice, and contributing to the assessment and evaluation of those competencies.
To provide specialist advice, consultation and training and (where agreed locally) clinical supervision to non-psychologists in the trusts for their provision of psychological support and approaches.
To contribute to pre- and post-qualification courses for clinical, health or counselling psychology as appropriate.
To continue to develop expertise in the area of professional pre and post-qualification training and clinical supervision.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Satisfactory completion of postgraduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained before1996) as accredited by the BPS.
- Registration with the Health Care Professions Council.(HCPC).
Desirable criteria
- Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
- Specialist training or demonstrable expertise in one or more areas of research methodology.
Experience
Essential criteria
- Post-qualification experience of working as a practitioner psychologist within the NHS.
- Experience of working as a qualified practitioner psychologist in a physical health setting.
- Working with a wide variety of client groups, across the adult life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across a range of care settings including outpatient and in-patient settings
- Maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems
- Exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan
- Teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
- Representing the profession in local policy or planning forums
Desirable criteria
- Experience in service development and/or innovation
- Membership of national professional or inter-professional groups
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts
- Experience of research in physical health settings
- Post-qualification experience of research in physical health setting
- Experience of working in a clinical research environment
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex dataanalysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
- Advanced theoretical and practical knowledge of clinical health psychology, consistent with doctoral level professional training and further post qualification study, training and/or supervised experience
- Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies
- Specialist clinical knowledge of clinical health psychology, consistent with previous experience in this setting
- Ability to plan, organise and provide teaching and training on relevant psychological topics, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
- Knowledge of relevant legislation and DoH policy and implementation guidelines, and of the implications of such documentation for clinical practice and professional management in relation to health care in general and cancer services in particular
- Evidence of continuing professional development consistent with expected standards of the British Psychological Society and the Division of Clinical Psychology
- Familiarity with the ethical and professional standards expected of Clinical Psychologists as laid down in the BPS ‘Code of Ethics and Conduct (2009), and the BPS Practice Guidelines (2017).
- Awareness and thorough understanding of the political, social and economic policy framework within which health and mental health services are delivered and an ability to articulate and interpret clearly the role of the professions of clinical, health and counselling psychology within this context
Desirable criteria
- Specialist knowledge of the specialist area
- Publication in peer-reviewed clinical or service-related journals.
Skills
Essential criteria
- Skills in the use of highly complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management commensurate with doctoral level training, including specialist clinical interviewing, behavioural observation, complex psychometric testing and specialist neuropsychological testing.
- Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills (written and verbal) including the ability empathically, sensitively and effectively to communicate clinical and condition-related information to patients, their families, carers and professional colleagues (within and outside the NHS) that is extremely complicated, technical or sensitive and potentially distressing to the recipient or that is extremely contentious or challenging
- When communicating with patients, carers and colleagues, has the high level interpersonal skills necessary to obtain and convey highly complex, sensitive or contentious information in emotionally charged and extremely emotive settings, in a manner that addresses and overcomes psychological resistance, hostility, antagonism, and problems of motivation and engagement, as well as barriers to understanding arising from cognitive, cultural or linguistic factors
- Ability to show respect for patients and practitioners, and to build and sustain effective working relationships
- A commitment to the integration of research and clinical services including the evaluation of services for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the service area
- Resourcefulness and ability to work independently at a high level and as a member of a team and to deliver team and organisational objectives
- Adaptable and able to work flexibly when required (particularly in the light of changing service priorities
- Capacity for tolerating frustration, change and high levels of demand with an ability to work effectively under pressure
- Demonstrable leadership in relation to psychology and other professions.
- High-level negotiation skills
- Computing skills: data processing, word-processing, literature-searching consistent with doctoral training and the need for data-analysis to support audit and research
- Excellent verbal and written communication
Desirable criteria
- Evidence of management skills.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Helen Niccolls
- Job title
- Principal Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 0151 5293251
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