Oncology Psychotherapist / Counsellor

Job description

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For further information please refer to the job description and personal specification

Clinical Responsibility - patient care

• To work as a clinician in the delivery of a counselling service to the Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Trust, working directly and indirectly with patients, and with members of the multi-disciplinary team involved in the care of cancer patients, to improve patients' psychological wellbeing, quality of life and coping strategies.
• To provide specialist psychological assessments for patients referred to the Adult Psychological Support Service and make decisions about support options considering the individual needs and choice of the patient, their clinical treatment, prognosis and resources available; referring on to the most appropriate specialists if required.

Education and Development Responsibility - own as well as the development of other

• Maintain a personal programme of continuing professional development as required by professional body and participate in other activities designed to ensure the continuing development of specialized professional clinical skills. This should inform, update and expand practice and be disseminated as appropriate within the team.
• To provide clinical case supervision in both group and one to one format according to need for health care professionals within the organisation related to the psychological support of patients.

Policy and Service Development

In consultation with the Head of Pastoral Care Psychological Care and PALS as well as the Consultant Psychologist:

• Participate in the identification and recommendation of service priorities for psychological practice.
• Participate in appropriate developments in psychological practice.
• Participate in the development, evaluation and monitoring of the services' operational policies through the deployment of professional skills in service evaluation and audit.

Research, Service Evaluation and Audit

• To routinely collect outcome data for service evaluation and monitoring purposes.
• To utilise theory, evidence based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work, work with other team members and to staff in the trust.

Administration and IT

• To undertake administrative duties appropriate to the tasks of the post including the specialized use of IT.
• To be familiar with computer use (e-mail, internet, Word, PowerPoint, Excel).

Person specification

Education/Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Master's level training in counselling or psychotherapy
• Accredited with BACP/ UKCP or other recognised counselling professional body

Desirable criteria

• Other health professional training, e.g. nurse, OT, physio, radiographer, medic
• Recognised supervision qualification/ training
• Training/ qualification in one or more specialised areas of clinical expertise
• ( Couples / Groups)

Experience

Essential criteria

• Psychological Therapies experience in in a physical health/ acute settings
• Experience working with individuals with long term life threatening physical illness
• Experience working in an exploratory therapeutic approach pure or integrated (existential/ person centred / CBT humanistic / psychodynamic)
• Experience of working within multi cultural settings
• Experience of providing clinical supervision in a group or 1:1

Desirable criteria

• Professional clinical experience working in Cancer care/ Palliative Care/ HIV/ Critical Care
• Evidence of research productivity

The Royal Marsden values diversity and is committed to the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority groups. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates, LGBTQ+ candidates and candidates with disabilities.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we are working to create a workplace that enables all staff to reach their full potential. We are committed to this because we know that greater diversity and inclusion will lead to an even greater positive impact for the people we serve.

Due to the high volumes of applications we receive, we reserve the right to close any adverts before the published closing date once we have received a sufficient number of applications. We advise you to submit your application as early as possible to prevent disappointment. Please ensure your information is accurate to avoid errors with processing your application

All applicants will be contacted by email to the address supplied on your application. Applicants are advised to check their email accounts regularly and to ensure that email filters are set to allow our emails.

Flu Vaccination - What We Expect of our Staff

At The Royal Marsden we have an immune compromised patient population who we must protect as much as we can against the flu virus. Each year, seasonal flu affects thousands of people in the UK. Occurring mainly in winter, it is an infectious respiratory disease capable of producing symptoms ranging from those similar to a common cold, through to very severe or even fatal disease.

The wellbeing of our staff and patients is of the upmost importance to us, and it is the expectation of The Royal Marsden that all patient-facing staff have an annual flu vaccination, provided free of charge by the Trust.

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