Job Description
We are looking for an enthusiastic psychologist with experience of working in physical healthcare to join our well-established, supportive and welcoming Cancer Psychology Service, and to lead on our new partnership with Marie Curie Hospital. We have good resources for CPD and strong links to Liverpool University, offering opportunities to getting involved in teaching, research and trainee placements.
In this role, you will work directly with people who are living with cancer and their families, supervise more junior colleagues in the service, collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines and contribute to service development.
Liverpool is a great place to live, with fantastic energy and humour, a vibrant cultural life and easy access to the mountains and the sea. We can also offer beautiful architecture, lots of open space, good schools and a lower than average cost of living.
1. To provide a high quality and highly specialised psychology service for patients who are resident in Liverpool or under the care of LUHFT and are affected by cancer.
2. To provide a high quality and highly specialised psychology service for patients and their families who being supported by Marie Curie Hospice in the context of terminal illness and bereavement.
3. To be a highly specialist resource on psychological care to the wider services and to coordinate and contribute to providing education, training and supervision activities to enhance psychological support and treatment across the service.
4. To use research skills for needs assessment, audit, evaluation, service development and other research activity to support continued development of the services.
5. To apply highly specialist expertise, gained post-qualification, in psychological treatment and research to clinical work and leadership in evaluation and research.
6. To supervise junior staff as required.
7. To promote psychology and the service within the local health, social care and research communities.
8. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of Trust policies and procedures.
Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was created on 1 October 2019 following the merger of two adult acute Trusts, Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.
The merger provides an opportunity to reconfigure services in a way that provides the best healthcare services to the city and improves the quality of care and health outcomes that patients experience.
The Trust runs Aintree University Hospital, Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool University Dental Hospital and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
It serves a core population of around 630,000 people across Merseyside as well as providing a range of highly specialist services to a catchment area of more than two million people in the North West region and beyond.
To hear more about our achievements click here:
https://www.liverpoolft.nhs.uk/media/13089/1606-annual-report-booklet_final.pdf
Clinical
1. To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of patients 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 patients, family members and others involved in the patient’s care.
2. To formulate plans for formal psychological treatment and/or management of patients based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of patients’ problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialist psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across clinical teams, and in synthesis, adjusting and refining of psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
5. To address the needs of informal carers and family members as appropriate.
6. To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the psychological treatment and discharge of patients ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, and communicating and liaising with referrers and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
7. To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to patients’ treatment.
8. To ensure that all members of the clinical team(s) in which the psychologist works have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of patients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.
9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual patients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychologists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
10. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients under the consultant’s care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
11. To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the clinical teams.
12. To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the patient group to relevant staff and agencies outside the Trust.
Service management and development
1. To work with the Professional Lead for Psychology in contributing to planning, developing and coordinating psychology services for patients who are resident in Liverpool or under the care of LUHFT and are affected by cancer
2. To take specific responsibility for developing the psychology service at Marie Curie Hospice, including liaison with relevant state-holders and establishing effective working arrangements for them in order to meet the needs of patients.
3. To supervise directly the clinical work of relevant junior staff.
4. To contribute to representation of psychology on relevant local bodies.
5. To provide highly specialist psychological consultation to general managers, team leaders and other key staff in the joint planning, development and delivery of services for patients..
6. To contribute a psychological perspective to multidisciplinary and multi-agency planning and development at all levels of service..
7. Under the direction of the Professional Lead for Psychology, to advise on and, where agreed, implement organisational change to enhance psychological care.
8. To collaborate with specialist psychological and psychiatric staff within services in contributing to the development of programmes of education, training and supervision which uses the specific skills available locally for the benefit of patients..
9. To contribute advice to Trusts on the systematic governance of clinical, health and counselling psychology practice for patients with cancer and to collaborate with liaison psychiatry services to advise Trusts on provision of psychological care generally.
10. In the belief that the new service will have much to learn from and contribute to the development of services nationally, the Psychologist will be encouraged to be part of the national group for psychologists in Oncology and Specialist Palliative Care (SIGOPAC) to develop and maintain network links with colleagues working in similar settings across the UK.
Communications and working relationships
1. The psychologist will communicate with directors, managers, lead clinicians and professional leads and academics involved in medical and social care and clinical and service research across multiple sites and sectors.
2. The psychologist will liaise with relevant staff in LUHFT, Marie Curie and University of Liverpool, and other providers including NHS Trusts, primary care and the voluntary sector, and relevant individuals from Merseyside and Cheshire Cancer Network and from professional bodies and national groups.
3. Each aspect of this post as listed in ‘Duties’ above involves judgements requiring interpretation, analysis and synthesis of information obtained from multiple sources.
4. Each aspect of this post as listed in ‘Duties’ involves ensuring systems for effective communication about issues that will be very highly complex and may be sensitive in nature. The communication context may be highly emotive or contentious; excellent skills in communication will be used.
Information technology
1. To use a computer as necessary for clinical work, including literature searches, word processing, developing and maintaining training packs and information leaflets, inputting data, e-mailing, report writing and other tasks as necessary for the efficient running of the service and/or training needs.
2. To use advanced statistical and other software packages (SPSS, spreadsheets, graphics, referencing programmes, PowerPoint etc.) for the analysis and presentation of clinical, audit and research data.
Management arrangements
1. The psychologist will be managerially accountable to the Professional Lead for Psychology.
2. Annual professional development and review procedures will be administered by the Professional Lead for Psychology.
3. Office facilities and administrative support will be provided in LUHFT and at Marie Curie.
To be noted
1. This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the consultant may be required to undertake other duties which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the managers and Trust representatives.
2. This job description will be reviewed regularly in the light of changing service requirements and any such changes will be discussed with the Psychologist.
Clinical Governance / Quality
To contribute advice to the Trust on the systematic governance of clinical, health and counselling psychology practice for patients with cancer and to collaborate with liaison psychiatry services to advise Trusts on provision of psychological care generally.
Education and training development
1. To provide clinical and professional supervision to psychologists working in the service where appropriate.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. To contribute to pre- and post-qualification courses for clinical, health or counselling psychology as appropriate.
5. To continue to develop expertise in the area of professional pre and
post-qualification training and clinical supervision.
Equality and Diversity
It is the responsibility of every member of staff to understand our equality and diversity commitments and statutory obligations under current equality legislation (the Equality Act 2010) and to:
Act in ways that support equality and diversity and recognises the importance of people’s rights in accordance with legislation, policies, procedures and good practice.
Valuing people as individuals and treating everyone with dignity and respect, consideration and without prejudice, respecting diversity and recognising peoples expressed beliefs, preferences and choices in working with others and delivering appropriate services.
1. Recognise and report behaviour that undermines equality under Trust policy.
2. Be consciously aware of own behaviour and encourage the same levels of behaviour in colleagues.
3. Acknowledge others’ different perspectives and recognise the diverse needs and experiences of everyone they come into contact with.
4.With the support of managers develop an equality and diversity objective through the personal development review process.
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