Senior Highly Specialist Clinical Neuropsychologist

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to provide a highly specialist clinical psychology service to patients with neuromuscular disease. The post demands the delivery of a specialist clinical psychology service to neuromuscular patients with complex physical health needs.

The post is split between the McArdle service (0.3) and the Neuromuscular Complex Care Centre (NMCCC) (0.7) within the Centre for Neuromuscular Disease (CNMD) at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. The NMCCC provides a unique opportunity to work as part of a wide multi-disciplinary team, picking up referrals during routine in-patient stays. The CNMD is one of the largest clinical and research centres of its kind in the UK and Europe. There will be lots of opportunities for the post holder to network nationally and internationally and to develop a research framework. There will be opportunities to supervise students.

Main duties of the job

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team and joining a weekly team meeting. Seeing and assessing patients on the NMCCC. Attending the McArdle Highly specialised service. Seeing patients in outpatients (face to face and virtual, individual and group) establishing referral criteria, signposting to local services where appropriate, undertaking audit and research to advance patient management. Supervising trainees

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For the full Person Specification and more information regarding the main responsibilities of this role, please refer to the attached Job Description.

• To provide a highly specialised psychological service to patients living with neuromuscular disease and their family or carers.
• To liaise with work and educational services and other organisations providing provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation contributing directly to patient’s formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To provide highly specialist psychological and neuropsychological assessments of clients based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of highly complex data from a variety of sources including neuropsychological tests, self report measures, direct and indirect clinical observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patient’s care.
• To formulate plans for formal psychological treatment and/or management of patient’s cognitive and psychological problems based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across a range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individual and/or their carers within and across teams based upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To make expert evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account highly complex factors concerning historical and neuro-developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of patients whose problems are psychological in origin, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual patients and provide both general and specialist advice.
• To plan and organise complex activities or programmes which require the formulation or adjustment of patient care plans as appropriate.
• To provide specialist advice, guidance and psychotherapy to patients and their carers.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner information regarding the assessment to a wider multidisciplinary team to further develop the patient’s programme of care.

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