Senior Clinical Psychologist: Staff Psychology & Bariatric Surgery

Senior Clinical Psychologist: Staff Psychology & Bariatric Surgery

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

We are delighted to offer this new permanent post for a Senior Clinical Psychologist for a split post working into the Staff Psychology and Bariatric Surgery services. The successful candidate will join a rapidly expanding Clinical Health Psychology Department within Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT).

This post is for a total of 0.6WTE, with 0.4WTE in Staff Psychology and 0.2 WTE in Bariatric Surgery.

To meet the needs of the services, we hope that a candidate could work Thursdays plus either Wednesday or Fridays as part of their working days.

Clinical and professional supervision will be provided by the Principal Clinical Psychologists who are clinical leads for the relevant services.

Interviews are planned to be held in-person on 15th May 2025.

Main duties of the job

Staff Psychology - This post will involve providing psychological services to the workforce of an acute hospital trust. You will be joining an existing team at an exciting time of service development. The service has recently concluded a pilot phase of new staff support services like group debriefing and are looking to now consolidate and embed these services across the trust.

Experience of delivering group interventions and/or psychological education and training would be desirable.

Bariatric Surgery - This post involves psychological assessment and therapeutic input to patients preparing for and adjusting to bariatric surgery. Experience of working with adults with complex mental health problems is key and experience in bariatric surgery or weight management services is desirable. You will be joining an existing service based within a multidisciplinary team which greatly values and welcomes psychological input.

Job responsibilities

In the Staff Psychology Service (0.4 WTE), the successful candidate will play a valuable role in an existing team to refine and further embed a post-incident group debriefing service into the Trust's staff support offer. The successful candidate will provide clinical oversight of the service which is delivered by multi-disciplinary colleagues and provide reflective practice to these colleagues. Another dimension of the role will be to engage the workforce in recently developed interventions, like a self-guided online resource for colleagues. The post holder will also supervise and line manage the service Assistant Psychologist.

Within the Bariatric Surgery service (0.2 WTE), the post primarily involves the delivery of psychological care and pre-surgery psychological assessment to patients seeking and adjusting to bariatric surgery. The post-holder would be joining an existing service provided by the Principal Clinical Psychologist in the team to broaden capacity within the service. The successful candidate will liaise with specialist dietitians, nurses, surgeons and other medical staff to contribute to patient care and MDT decisions. There may be opportunities for contribution to audit, service evaluation and training.

Person Specification

QUALIFICATIONS / TRAINING

• Post graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, two or more distinct psychological therapies, as accredited by the British Psychological Society.
• Doctoral level qualification in clinical or counselling (or equivalent prior to 1995) by course accredited by the BPS and registration as a practitioner psychologist with HCPC.
• Completion of formal clinical supervisor training sufficient to be able to supervise doctoral trainees.
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE

• Experience of working with clinical presentations equivalent to or relevant to this role.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of patients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings and with difficult to treat groups.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams and offering systemic interpretations to have impact on the team functioning in patient care.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the patient group and mental health.
• Relevant experience of developing and setting up new services.
• Experience of working with NHS staff and teams or equivalent.

COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIPS (INCLUDING MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES)

• Ability to exercise the full clinical responsibility for patient's psychological care and treatment within the clinical specialty and to co-ordinate the psychological care provided by others.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to provide emotional support, consultation and professional mentorship to multidisciplinary team members.

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.

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Part-time, Flexible working, Home or remote working, Compressed hours.

Reference number

372-MED2335-A