Clinical Psychologist Stroke Preceptorship Band 7/8A in Willenhall

The post holder will be responsible for providing specialist comprehensive psychological and neuropsychological assessments (stroke) and programmes of psychological care for individuals who have experienced a stroke and their families. This will include work with people in the in-patient stroke rehabilitation unit and following discharge into the community where appropriate. They will work collaboratively with other health and social care professionals, third sector staff and non-professional carers. They will help organise and initiate service developments in consultation with the lead psychologist. As well as managing their own patient workload, they will be responsible for supervising the psychological work of Assistant Psychologists and other MDT staff. They will work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Stroke Services policies and procedures.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide a specialist clinical service to patients and their families who have had a stroke.
• Develop trusting and empathic relationships with clients and communicate highly emotive information with clarity and sensitivity.
• Assess and interpret complex clinical situations and information from various sources including self-report measures, rating scales, structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patient's care.
• Develop formulations and use psychological models and frameworks to provide patients and their families with specialised programmes of care, based on evidence of efficacy, to aid rehabilitation and help them adjust to and cope emotionally with the often significantly distressing aspects of their condition.
• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• Provide assessment and interventions to enable rehabilitation for clients referred from the stroke rehabilitation unit.
• Carry out neuropsychological assessments where appropriate and communicate findings to the client, family members and other health and social care staff involved.
• Make recommendations and contribute to the neuropsychological and physical rehabilitation of clients with a stroke.
• Help facilitate therapeutic groups where needed in collaboration with other psychologists and MDT staff.
• Participate in multi-disciplinary team meetings and work collaboratively and in an integrated manner with other health professionals.
• Liaise regularly and work collaboratively with the existing psychologist in stroke.
• Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• Undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• Carry out and contribute to mental capacity assessments where appropriate in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• Responsible for prioritising work activities according to service and user needs and resources and managing own clinical case load.
• Responsible for providing specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation on the psychological care of clients to non-psychologist colleagues as appropriate.
• Responsible for maintaining own competency to practice through continuing professional development and further develop specialist knowledge and skills relevant to the service and clinical psychology.
• Participate in Professional Development Reviews, line management meetings and peer support.
• Attend and participate in Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology Team meetings and contribute to clinical governance in these services.

Management, Policy and Service Development

• Work collaboratively within the NHS and multi-agency groups to advance good working relationships with local health, social care, third sector and voluntary staff and service users to ensure integration of initiatives and services.
• Advise both service and professional management on developments to the Stroke Service in consultation with other staff and in line with local and national guidance documents.
• Responsible for maintaining satisfactory records of service operation and clinical activity in accordance with agreed protocols, regular auditing service data and ensuring security of confidential data.
• Adhere to current policies in the Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology Services and all trust policy and procedures related to risk, health and safety and confidentiality of information.
• Participate in quality improvement projects in Stroke and Clinical Health Psychology in conjunction with the lead Psychologist.
• Be accountable to the Head of Clinical Health Psychology and the Team Leads for clinical governance.
• Be managed by the Consultant Clinical Psychologist in consultation with the relevant Team Lead.

Teaching, Training and Supervision

• Provide leadership and direction on psychological issues in MDTs, in conjunction with the existing psychologist.
• Receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.
• Provide regular supervision for Assistant Psychologists and other MDT staff where appropriate.
• Provide support to other staff working in challenging circumstances to manage the emotional demands of their clinical roles.
• Responsible for providing education and training in the psychological aspects of care to empower and enable other health and social care staff to achieve the highest standards of psychosocial care.
• Take appropriate care of trust equipment and resources used in the course of work.
• Undertake all trust mandatory training requirements.

Research and Development

• Utilise research skills for audit and service evaluation as well as clinically relevant research.
• Disseminate results through presenting at case discussions, workshops, and conferences and/or through publication.
• Supervise the psychologically related research of trainees, assistants and other health professionals.
• Consider theory, evidence based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• Examine and study new ways of working or transferring existing practical and theoretical models of work from one context to another.

Information Technology

• Skilled at use of information technology systems to support service related work.
• Uses information technology systems to support formal and informal research activities.