Principal Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Requirements the employer expects applicants to meet.

• Experience

  Experience of working as a qualified clinical or counselling psychologist at a highly specialist level.

• Experience

  Experience of working and communicating with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across a range of care settings including inpatient, community, outpatient, residential, primary care

• Experience

  Experience in the management of services, including the management of psychology staff groups.

• Experience

  Experience in leading on the promotion and development of psychological approaches within health care settings.

• Experience

  Experience of working clinically within health and medical settings.

• Experience

  Experience of maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing psychological and physical health problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.

• Experience

  Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan

• Experience

  Experience of teaching, training, and professional and clinical supervision.

• Personal Qualities

  Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.

• Personal Qualities

  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.

• Personal Qualities

  Positive attitude, sensitivity and commitment to working with relevant patient groups and their significant others.

• Personal Qualities

  Experience in working with interpreters.

• Personal Qualities

  Ability to think creatively and flexibly about psychology as applied to designated services

• Personal Qualities

  Excellent organisational skills, able to work with appropriate autonomy and able to recognise when escalation to the DPS senior management team is required.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Doctoral level knowledge of clinical/counselling psychology, including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology, models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, and two or more distinct psychological therapies.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Highly developed skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention , and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.

• Skills and Knowledge

  A high-level ability to communicate effectively both in writing and orally complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and a wide range of lay and professional persons.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Ability to exercise judgement when presented with highly complex facts or situations, which require the analysis, interpretation , and comparison of a range of options.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non - professional groups.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical or counselling psychology .

• Skills and Knowledge

  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.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Knowledge of legislation & policy in relation to DPS’s patient groups and psychological, neurological and physical health/mental health.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by HCPC and BPS.

• Skills and Knowledge

  Skills in working with diversity

• Education and Qualifications

  Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996), as accredited by the HCPC, including models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, as accredited by the British Psychological Society.

• Education and Qualifications

  Professional registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

• Education and Qualifications

  Eligible for Practitioner Full Membership of the BPS Divisions of Clinical or Counselling Psychology