Senior Highly Specialist Clinical Neuropsychologist in London

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.

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, the role includes:

• 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

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) is one of the most complex NHS trusts in the UK, serving a large and diverse population. We provide academically led acute and specialist services, to people from the local area, from throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. Our vision is to deliver top-quality patient care, excellent education, and world-class research.

We are dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of many complex illnesses. UCLH specialises in women’s health and the treatment of cancer, infection, neurological, gastrointestinal and oral disease. It has world-class support services including critical care, imaging, nuclear medicine and pathology.

We are committed to sustainability and have pledged to become a carbon net zero health service, embedding sustainable practice throughout UCLH. We have set an ambitious target of net zero for our direct emissions by 2031 and indirect emissions by 2040.

Key Responsibilities

• 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 expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation contributing directly to patients’ 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 patients’ 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 individuals 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.