Principal Clinical Psychologist

The post-holder will be responsible for the provision of a specialist stroke inpatient and early stroke discharge psychological service for adults admitted to Chesterfield Royal Hospital., The clinician would work closely with the consultant for neuropsychology, who offers community stroke psychology provision for North Derbyshire. The intent is that we offer a seamless and integrated service from admission to ward, through highly acute and early stroke discharge and then on to wider community support.

The role includes direct therapy input to inpatients, groups, face to face or via video call. This work requires the passion and resilience to work with clients who are facing severe illness and sometimes end of life issues. The duties will also include working compassionately with carers, families and other staff members along with helping us to develop the team's research and quality improvement projects. At this grade the postholder would also be required to provide leadership in development of the service and contribute to the wider integrated care board in the East Midlands. This would include representing our trust at county and regional meetings.

Our trust's large psychology division offers a wide range CPD via expert supervisors. The postholder will have access to advice, consultation and support from psychology peer group meetings.

This post may require working across a variety of hospital settings, offering consultation and direct intervention on intensive care, high dependency and cardiac wards. Our experience is that psychology consultancy input is highly appreciated by the medical staff that we work with.

Relevant experience in neuropsychological settings is expected and experience in inpatient care is an advantage, but not essential. We encourage our staff to work flexibly, collaboratively, compassionately and to utilise the best-evidenced models for rehabilitation psychology. You will join the vigorous Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Trust neuropsychology specialist group and have the opportunity learn and contribute to our growing body of knowledge and clinical experience. We also run a group for those people who are working towards their BPS qualification in clinical neuropsychology (QICN).

Our trust's wider department of 320+ psychologists boasts a good retention rate due to a friendly working atmosphere and a wide range of accredited psychological CDP including, trauma, EMDR, Psychodynamic, ACT, CAT and neuropsychology. We are committed to helping you develops your skills in a variety of clinical pathways so that we can further develop this vital and well-respected service.

Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Trust was an early adopter of mindfulness and compassion-focussed care due to the influence of one of our best known local psychologists Sir Paul Gilbert. His continued support of the division has meant that we have integrated mindfulness and CFT at the centre of a wide body of psychological approaches. This is also at the heart of our staff support system; we are proud that during covid we took care of our staff and even gave advice to other trusts about staff wellbeing. This has led to high retention rates amongst our psychological staff.

Recently we have solidified our structure by becoming one of the core divisions of our trust. This has combined all of our counsellors, psychotherapists, PWPs, psychologists and allied staff into one strong group. We all endeavour to 'work in place' and integrate into our own team areas but there is a strong sense of belonging to one psychology 'family'.

At present our new focus, alongside truly integrated care, is to instil trauma informed care at the heart of our work. Many staff are training in EMDR or are already experienced practitioners. Therefore we will support new staff to train and contribute to our growing division of compassionate evidence-driven professionals.