Job overview
Do you have a degree in Psychology?
Do you have experience working at Barts Health NHS Trust?
Interested in considering your next career step?
Major Trauma Centre Psychology, based at The Royal London Hospital, is seeking to recruit to our three full-time Band 4 Assistant Psychologist posts.
This is a service for all ages, children and adults, inpatients and outpatients, based within the Royal London Hospital setting.
The roles are full time and in person at RLH.
Main duties of the job
To contribute to maintaining systems designed to manage the service caseload and evaluate the service. To produce data and use reporting systems for routine communication with the project leadership and other internal and external partners, including services at other London MTCs. This communication will involve the use of formal data analysis and presentation. It is important that the post holder has degree-level knowledge of psychological research, experience completing research and clinical audits and service evaluation. This includes the administration of patient information and direct contact with patients and their carers, with this aim, under supervision. You will therefore be at the Royal London Hospital in person full time. A dominant part of the Assistant Psychology role is to contribute to the service’s administration of psychological screening measures for inpatients at RLH and to administrate follow-up outpatient contact, usually via text, email or telephone. The team Assistants are involved in developing and applying clinical materials for the service and contributing to ongoing project work.
The Assistant Psychologists work autonomously within professional guidelines, with exposure to the theory and practice of providing psychological support within the context of Major Trauma. The post holders are required to be comfortable working in an acute hospital setting, working across the age ranges and building appropriate professional relationships within this particularly busy multi-disciplinary environment.
Working for our organisation
Barts Health is one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, and one of Britain’s leading healthcare providers.
The Barts Health group of NHS hospitals is entering an exciting new era on our improvement journey to becoming an outstanding organisation with a world-class clinical reputation. Having lifted ourselves out of special measures, we now have the impetus and breathing space to chart a fresh course in which we are continually striving to improve all our services for patients.
Our vision is to be a high-performing group of NHS hospitals, renowned for excellence and innovation, and providing safe and compassionate care to our patients in east London and beyond. That means being a provider of excellent patient safety, known for delivering consistently high standards of harm-free care and always caring for patients in the right place at the right time. It also means being an outstanding place to work, in which our WeCare values and behaviours are visible to all and guide us in how we work together.
We strive to live by our WeCare values and are committed to promoting inclusion, where every staff member has a sense of belonging. We value our differences and fully advocate, cultivate and support an inclusive working environment.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The full job description provides an overview of the key tasks and responsibilities of the role, and the person specification outlines the qualifications, skills, experience, and knowledge required. For both documents, please view the attachment/s below.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
1. An upper second class honours degree or higher in psychology
2. Eligibility for Graduate registration with BPS
Desirable criteria
3. Further post-graduate training in relevant areas of professional psychology, mental health practice and/or research design and analysis
Experience
Essential criteria
4. Experience of work with people presenting with physical and / or mental health challenges or other relevant problems (e.g., learning disabilities, organic impairment)
Desirable criteria
5. Paid work in a setting providing direct care.
6. Experience of working with people who may be deemed at risk with regards safeguarding.
7. Experience of administering complex psychometric tests and to use psychological equipment in accordance with standardised timing, stimulus presentation and response monitoring requirements.
8. Experience of working in a multidisciplinary team.
Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria
9. High level of interpersonal and communication skills (written and verbal) including an ability to work and effectively communicate complex or sensitive information in emotionally charged settings potentially involving conflict and significant personal distress.
10. Effective communication when interacting with service users and colleagues, especially when information is sensitive.
11. An awareness and understanding of needs and difficulties of people with mental health problems and disabilities and of contemporary issues in the field.
12. An ability to link and apply psychological theory - principles, undersanding and knowledge - to applied practice.
13. An awareness and understanding of working with a diverse population of service users and colleagues. Particularly, the differential needs of people from black and minority ethnic communities and from other groups with protected characteristics.
14. An awareness of the service issues arising within a multi-cultural urban area.
15. Ability to respond safely to physical and verbal aggression, drawing on training in de-escalation and breakaway where provided
16. Awareness of boundary issues between professionals and between service users and psychologists.
17. An understanding of statistical analysis commensurate with an honours degree in psychology.
18. Experience using Microsoft and associated software for purposes of data analysis and reporting, including databases and statistical programmes such as SPSS.
19. An ability to write articulate and comprehensible reports, letters and other correspondence.
20. Experience of collecting research data, including questionnaire design and interviewing.
Desirable criteria
21. Knowledge of cognitive and behavioural principles and how to apply these in practice.
22. Ability to travel independently.