Principal Psychologist

This post forms part of the larger paediatric psychological medicine team based at Addenbrooke's Hospital and employed by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

The post holder will provide specialist psychological assessment and support for young people and families under the care of the hearing implant service at the Emmeline Centre, Addenbrooke's Hospital. You will work closely with the wider MDT, contributing to the assessment pathway for hearing implants, decisions regarding elective surgery, and offering developmental and cognitive assessment and psychological interventions for behavioural and emotional difficulties related to hearing impairment and hearing implant surgery.

The psychologist will provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy to patients and families, at the same time as offering advice and consultation on patients' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers. Work is autonomous within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the teams policies and procedures. Also, to utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.

Main duties of the job

The job involves working with children and adolescents with complex medical and surgical needs in hospital based settings at Addenbrooke's Hospital.

The job involves assessment and delivery of care involving both the patient and parents and family systems where there are complex social needs. The intervention level ranges from the specialist tertiary multidisciplinary team level and associated paediatric surgical ward nursing teams to community paediatric teams, social work, education and primary health care. Interventions routinely cross professional and Acute Health Trust and Community Mental Health Trust boundaries and sometimes involve Child Protection work.

The job involves physical effort of the nature of sitting in constrained position for extended patient / client therapy sessions, frequent intense concentration on assessment and formulation, it is sometimes highly distressing, dealing with such issues as chronic illness and family breakdown, and may deal with issues such as acute physical distress or illness, death, serious mental illness and child abuse

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting andempowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.