Principal Practitioner Psychologist Lead Oncology Psychology Service

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust; London; On-site; GBP 62,000 - 73,000; Part time

Job summary

Join a leading healthcare organization as a Principal Practitioner Psychologist in the Oncology Psychology Service. This part-time role involves providing expert psychological assessments and interventions to patients in oncology and palliative care, while also supervising staff and contributing to service development. Ideal candidates will have experience in physical health settings and a commitment to psychologically informed practice.

Qualifications

• Experience in specialist psychological assessment and treatment.
• Post-qualification experience in multidisciplinary environments.

Responsibilities

• Provide highly specialist psychological assessments for oncology patients.
• Manage referral pathways and databases for oncology services.
• Supervise and support nursing colleagues.

Skills

Communication

Teamwork

Leadership

Education

Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology

HCPC registration as Practitioner Psychologist

Job description

Our current vacancies

If you want to be part of the Royal Free London team, search our current vacancies below to find the job for you.

Principal Practitioner Psychologist Lead Oncology Psychology Service

NHS AfC: Band 8b

Main area Psychology Grade NHS AfC: Band 8b Contract Permanent Hours Part time - 22.5 hours per week Job ref 391-NMUH-7110019

Site North Middlesex University Hospital Town London Salary £62,215 - £72,293 per annum inclusive of outer HCAs Salary period Yearly Closing 23/05/2025 23:59

The North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust is a medium-sized acute and community trust with over 525 beds and over 600 community staff, serving more than 600,000 people living across Enfield and Haringey and the surrounding areas, including Barnet and Waltham Forest.

The hospital has been on its present site for over 100 years and was established as an NHS trust by statute in December 1990. The Trust’s services are provided on the North Middlesex University Hospital site as well as a range of community sites across the London Borough of Enfield, including at partner hospitals. They provide services in collaboration with a range of partners, including local GPs, acute, mental health and other community health service providers across North Central London.

In the year ending 31 March 2022, the Trust reported a turnover of £419.7m and employed almost 4,000 staff. Following the transfer of Enfield Community Services on 1st April 2023, this has increased as we have welcomed over 600 new staff including District Nurses, Community Matrons, Community Physiotherapists, Psychologists and many more across a wide range of adult and children’s community services in Enfield. It is an exciting time to join North Mid as we continue our journey to become an integrated care organisation to deliver high quality, seamless care in our local communities, with a focus on tackling health inequalities.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity is available to join the Oncology & Palliative Care specialties at North Middlesex University Hospital which is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, a Consultant Psychologist led service.

This post would suit a Lead Practitioner Psychologist in Oncology with experience of working within physical health settings/medical teams, ideally with experience of the specific needs of patients using Oncology & Palliative Care services. An interest in working collaboratively with others to promote psychologically informed practice and care would be crucial. The role will provide a variety of opportunities that can support career development, including experience of leading, pathway development work, project management and consultancy.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will likely be based at North Middlesex University Hospital. The role will initially be focused on the provision of inpatient care and outpatient work. Teaching, supervision and support to nursing colleagues to promote psychologically informed care and interventions within the oncology and palliative care specialities will be another part of this role. The post holder will also have supervisory responsibilities for a trainee and potentially more junior qualified staff in the future.

To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of service users within a highly specialised clinical setting referred by cancer teams based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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 service users, family members and others involved in the service user’s care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

Working for our organisation

North Mid is part of North Central London integrated care system – consisting of the NHS and Local authority organisations in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. As with other ICS’s, we are working increasingly closely with partners and indeed many of our financial and performance objectives are measured at this system level. Whilst all organisations remain as standalone, statutory bodies we have an ICS infrastructure for making shared decisions and agreeing shared approaches.

We are proud of our staff and want to ensure their training allows them to provide excellent clinical care. We are also a training unit for medical students from UCL and St George’s University Grenada, and for nursing and midwifery students from Middlesex and City Universities.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide expert knowledge and guidance regarding psychological issues relating to the care of patients in oncology services

To manage the referral pathways and information databases as needed for the operational running of the North Middlesex Oncology Psychology Service

To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of patients referred to the oncology psychology team, based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and other professionals involved in a patient’s care.

To formulate plans for psychological treatment and/or management, drawing on appropriate conceptual frameworks and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the range of care settings and physical health problems; adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining several provisional hypotheses.

To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical processes and physical ill-health or cognitive changes.

To be responsible for implementing or supporting access to a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups for patients where psychological distress, mental health co-morbidities or cognitive functioning are impacting engagement with care and rehabilitation or affecting relationships with the care system. Therapy approaches will include cognitive behavioural therapy (including third wave therapies such as ACT and CFT), trauma informed and systemic approaches, and motivational interviewing.

To ensure that psychological interventions management strategies contribute to a coherent optimal package of care.

To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the patients’ formulation, diagnosis, treatment and discharge plan.

To ensure that all members of the clinical MDT have access to psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of patients, through the provision of advice and consultation on the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.

To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team.

Person specification

Education & professional Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 2000) as accredited by the British Psychological Society, or British Psychological Society Statement of Equivalence.
• HCPC registration as Practitioner Psychologist.
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.

Experience

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including community, primary care, outpatient and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity.
• Evidence of post-qualification supervised clinical experience in therapeutic intervention and management of patients under oncology and palliative care services, using assessment and intervention techniques at a specialist level.
• Post-qualification experience of work within interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary environments.
• Post-qualification experience of working delivering group interventions in a physical health setting, ideally within oncology or palliative care
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision of other qualified Clinical Psychologists and other professional disciplines, ideally including experience of delivery level 2 psychological support skills and other training of oncology staff.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience in leading case conferences, complex case discussions or other patient-focused meetings.

Skills and aptitudes

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management.
• Knowledge of at least two relevant theoretical models and psychological interventions relevant to the care of patients with persistent pain.
• Highly skilled in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and quantitative data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the British Psychological Society/HCPC.
• Formal training and/or experience in supervision of other psychologists.
• Ability to form good working relationships with others in a multidisciplinary setting.
• Experience in service development, leadership and management.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of group interventions and skills in engaging patients in group interventions
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Familiarity with SPSS databases and statistical package.

Personal Qualities & attributes

• Excellent interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to take responsibility for the work of others.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.

We reserve the right to expire vacancies prior to the advertised closing date once a sufficient number of applications have been received.

You will only be contacted by the Recruitment Team via email if you are shortlisted for this post. Please ensure therefore that you check your e-mail account regularly.

Please note in order to progress your application, your data will be processed by our 3 rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, (NLPSS) who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of NMUH.

If you are offered a role with one of the NLPSS partner trusts, as part of pre-employment checks youridentity and right to work documentation will be verifiedremotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk

NMUH uses identification scanning technology to confirm the authenticity of documents; all prospective employees of NMUH will have their original documents verified using this technology.

By applying for this post you are agreeing to NMUH transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs. You will not be able to track the progress of your application or receive messages through the NHS Jobs website, and as an employer, we will not be able to respond to any e-mails sent to us via the NHS Jobs website. If you are offered a job, information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) system and other secure, internal NHS workforce systems.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at saving you time and improving efficiencies within the NHS when your employment transfers. Therefore we want you to complete your e-learning modules prior to joining our organisation.

If you are anEU/EEA citizen who does not have EU Settlement or Pre-Settled status, you will require a visa to work in the UK.

If you require sponsorshipfor a visa to work in the UK, to avoid disappointment, please check to ensure you are eligible under theUKVI points based system

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.

Name Jemma O'Reilly Job title Group Lead Cancer Nurse Email address jemma.o'[e-mail] Additional information

Can also contact Clare Stevenson - Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Cancer and Palliative Care Care Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
[e-mail]