Principal Psychologist - Complications of Excessive Weight

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Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.

·       To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the psychological medicine service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and 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 develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors as well as health needs and impact of health problems on the family.

·       To develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of hospital and community based settings.

·       To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

·       To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family, carers or group. To do this in the context of health and surgical interventions.

·       To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of clients and manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.

·       To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other multidisciplinary professionals, both within hospital and community settings, contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

·       To supervise qualified, trainee and assistant psychologists; as well as other professionals undertaking psychological work, as appropriate.

·       To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across the designated area and agencies serving the client group.

·       To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.

·       To act as care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the patient’s psychological needs, coordinating the work of others involved with psycho-social care, taking responsibility for arranging reviews as required and communicating effectively with the patient, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.

·       To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.

·       To produce reports in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers. To maintain the required record keeping.

·       To assist in the management of the clinical psychology team caseload.