Assistant Psychologist

Job overview

We have an assistant psychologist post available within the Adult Inpatient Psychology service. We are seeking enthusiastic aspiring psychology practitioners of the future who will work under supervision of a clinical psychologist with service users, psychology colleagues and multidisciplinary colleagues to deliver high quality psychological care.

This is an exciting time to join our service as major transformation projects taking place across the trust, including projects to improve the therapeutic milieu of the inpatient wards as well as the building of modern, purpose build hospital buildings.

The successful applicant will aid in the provision for psychology input to two adult acute inpatient wards. This will include working directly with services users to provide individual assessments and interventions, as well as running groups.

You will receive regular supervision from qualified psychologists and get the opportunity to be involved in teaching and service development projects.

Main duties of the job

The candidate will work closely with the ward multi-disciplinary team by joining in regular team meetings. You will be responsible for facilitating regular psycho-education groups on the ward, drawing on skills from CBT and DBT frameworks. This will involve liaising with Occupational Therapy and activity coordinator collages to add to the timetable of therapeutic activities.

You will also conduct individual assessment and feedback to ward staff to develop a

strong bio-psycho-social understanding of a person’s difficulties. There will be some opportunity for brief therapeutic work under supervision. You will be required to write summaries of your work in service users’ electronic notes, as well as communicating with team members in meetings.

The successful candidates will have exceptional interpersonal skills and be able to demonstrate that they can form good empathic relationships with clients who are acutely unwell, often experiencing significant distress, as well as the ability to form good working relationships with staff with different professional backgrounds.

Due to the high demand for these types of roles, we will have to place a cap on the number of applicants. Typically this cap is reached within 48 hours of posting the advert, so it is highly likely that the advert will be taken down before the deadline.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To undertake protocol based psychological assessments of clients applying psychological, including neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.
• To assist in the formulation and delivery of care plans involving the psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems.
• To work with other staff to assess service users, develop individualised intervention / treatment plans and review their care.
• To assist in the development of a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings where care takes place.
• To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings.

Teaching, Training and Supervision

• To receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines.
• To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS
• To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties
• To contribute to the training and support of other staff in psychological care.

Management, Recruitment and Service Development

• To assist in the design and implementation of service development projects within the service as required.
• To attend meetings in which service developments are planned and discussed.