Principal Applied Psychologist in Health

NHS; Southampton; On-site; GBP 62,000 - 73,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading healthcare organization as a Principal Applied Psychologist, contributing to specialized psychological care at University Hospital Southampton. You will collaborate with a dedicated team to provide assessments, therapeutic interventions, and leadership across key services, fostering a supportive and dynamic work environment. This role offers opportunities for professional development with a focus on various therapeutic approaches and a commitment to flexible working arrangements.

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, accredited by the BPS.
• Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council.
• Experience in managing trauma and delivering complex assessments.

Responsibilities

• Provide psychological assessments and interventions for patients with congenital cardiac and pelvic conditions.
• Supervise and consult with medical teams, enhancing psychological practices in patient care.
• Contribute to service development and work collaboratively with multi-disciplinary teams.

Skills

Communication

Trauma-informed care

Psychological assessment

Leadership

Team collaboration

Education

Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

Post-doctoral training in specialized therapy

Registered Practitioner Psychologist

Job description

Go back Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Principal Applied Psychologist in Health

The closing date is 29 June 2025

Come and join our psychology service as a senior lead working within University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust (UHS) which is a provider of regional and tertiary acute physical care.

The UHS Adult Psychology Service works into teams across the Trust and you will be working within the Congenital Cardiac (0.4wte) and Pelvic Exenteration (0.2wte) services clinically. These are established and valued roles and you will work with senior leads to work alongside our MDT colleagues to provide psychologically informed services. You will also work with a number of senior psychologists to support the broader aims and work within the psychology service and the Trust.

Balancing wellbeing with work demands and developing your professional skills are highly valued within the UHS Adult Psychology team. It offers many opportunities to develop your interest in therapeutic approaches through informal networking, facilitated reflective practice, education days and specialist supervision or discussion groups. Currently we have active interests in Systemic, Acceptance and Commitment, and EMDR therapeutic approaches but facilitate learning in other approaches.

The team can accommodate flexible working with most posts having an element of remote working.

UHS Adult Psychology are active in local and national specialist psychology groups, are developing a research strategy and have close links with Southampton University Clinical and Health Psychology courses.

Main duties of the job

The postholder will work with the Congenital Cardiac and Pelvic Exenteration teams to provide a psychological service for the team, patients, and families. They will offer assessment and therapeutic interventions to patients and supervision, consultation, and training to medical teams. They will work to embed psychological principals within patient care and link with national specialist groups within clinical health psychology.

Experience in working in an acute physical health setting and with evidence-based approaches to managing trauma is beneficial.

As a principal psychologist, the postholder will offer supervision and management to other psychologists or psychological therapists and be involved in service development and leadership within agreed medical services and the broader psychology service.

Postholders will connect to the wider UHS Adult Psychology team and other link with Child Psychology, Neuro Psychology, Mental Health Liaison and wider psychological services to develop pathways around patient care.

We have generic job descriptions to assist career development and gaining experience. We would encourage people to contact the team to find out more about the posts and the clinical area. We would be very happy to answer any of your questions.

If you would like to find out more information this post, please contact Dr Alison Pearce (Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist for UHS Adults) by email [e-mail]

About us

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is a newly established organisation, bringing together expertise from across mental health, learning disabilities, community, and physical health services. We are dedicated to delivering compassionate, high-quality, and accessible care to the diverse communities of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

With over 13,000 dedicated staff working across more than 300 sites, we place patients and staff at the centre of everything we do. Our goal is to create an integrated healthcare system that improves accessibility and ensures more consistent care for patients. By working together, we aim to improve patient outcomes, drive innovation, and meet the unique needs of the populations we serve.

Our Trust unites services from Southern Health, Solent NHS Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Trusts community and mental health teams, as well as Hampshire CAMHS, originally part of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. This transformation enables us to deliver more seamless care across the region, ensuring that patients receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time.

Join us as we embark on this exciting journey to shape the future of healthcare across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. We are deeply committed to our CARE values of compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence, and offer outstanding opportunities for career development, training, and collaborative working.

Job responsibilities

Further information about the Trust and this role can be found on the Job Description and Person Specification document attached. It is important to us that we ensure our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive to everyone - if as a potential candidate you are concerned a person specification may prevent or restrict your application for employment as a result of unintentional barriers on the grounds of your sex, race, age, sexual orientation, religion/belief or disability please initially contact the Trust's Recruitment team - detailed in the advert. The Trust will seek to resolve this issue wherever possible.

We are happy to talk Flexible Working - all requests for flexible working options can be discussed as part of the interview process.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists or equivalent experience.
• Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist
• Post-doctoral training in a specialised area of psychological therapy.
• Management or organisational training
• Accreditation as a therapist with BABCP, SfDBT, ACAT or similar body.

Experience

• In depth experience of working as a principal clinical psychologist.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course and 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 severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients psychological care and treatment, within the context of a multi-professional care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• Experience of working as a psychologist within a physical health context.
• Experience of supervising qualified psychologists and working with management to develop services.
• In depth experience of working as a principal clinical psychologist.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course and 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 severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients psychological care and treatment, within the context of a multi-professional care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• Experience of working as a psychologist within a physical health context.
• Experience of supervising qualified psychologists and working with management to develop services.

Additional Criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• For posts working in medical services, knowledge of the theory and practice of working with the psychological implications of physical health problems. For all services, knowledge of a trauma-informed approach to care.
• Skills in psychological therapies used to work with physical health and trauma such as CBT, ACT, EMDR, mindfulness approaches, Systemic therapies.
• Has received training (either formal or through experience) and carried out risk assessments within scope of practice.
• Ability to contain, explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with patients and indirectly via supervision of other staff.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Ability to constructively manage situations and people at times of conflict.
• Ability to work collaboratively with senior managers and staff in service delivery and developments.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practised within the field of clinical psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the patient group and service.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Ability to organise own workload effectively, prioritising a complex range of tasks and responsibilities to meet agreed deadlines
• Highly motivated to provide a high-quality service and to work with other team members to constantly strive for improving service user experience.
• Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
• Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Knowledge and skills in therapies working with the allocated medical area.
• Skills in the delivery, scoring and interpretation of neuropsychological assessments.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the service area.
• Ability to demonstrate leadership and management skills.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

£62,215 to £72,293 a yearBased on full time hours