nursing and medical students (e.g. in communication skills) and may also train
colleagues in psychological practices – e.g. by running training workshops for
teachers or social workers. This will involve designing, delivering and evaluating
training using materials appropriate to the audience.
5 Consult both with individuals and organizations. This would include being able to
manage effective one-to-one consultations as described in Chapter 10 and at the
same time being able to accept a commission for a larger piece of work such as
evaluating an in-house stress management programme within a company or
assisting a local authority with the reduction of unplanned teenage pregnancies.
It requires highly developed communication and negotiation skills.
6 Supervise and manage, that is guide others with less psychological training or experience in
psychological practice. Assessing, training and management are overlapping and
complementary skills. Even a newly qualified professional psychologist will be able
to monitor, train and report on the design and implementation of psychological
research by colleagues with less training in this area. More experienced HPs will
be able to manage and supervise teams of fellow HPs.
In the UK, practising health psychologists must be registered with the Health and
Care Professionals Council. ‘Health psychologist’ is one of nine ‘protected titles’, which
only registered professionals can use. Registration involves continuing professional
development and psychologists may be audited by the council to ensure that their
competencies are up to date.
HPs work in a variety of multidisciplinary settings. Hallas (2004) describes the varied
work of HPs in health care demonstrating how the work draws on the full range of
competencies outlined above. Hallas notes that HPs may be involved in direct patient
care, assessing and enhancing individuals’ psychological adjustment to illness and
treatment, minimizing distress associated with medical procedures, delivering health
education, facilitating patient decision-making and implementing psychological
interventions to promote healthy behaviours. As well as training health care profes -
sionals, running stress management courses and advising on job redesign HPs may
investigate whether an attitude change intervention could enhance patient adherence
and whether this would have any effects on clinical outcomes. HPs may also work in
public health services (e.g. including work on screening and/or shaping environments
to facilitate health behaviour uptake at a population level). In addition HPs may work
on health service policy by working in government and policy development units such
as the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Interestingly a position
paper from the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, (Knott, Muers and Aldridge, 2007)
outlined a behaviour change framework that draws explicitly on theory and research
discussed in this book. The paper emphasizes from the outset the importance of
understanding attitudes, values, self-efficacy, intentions and social influence in shaping
social change and so emphasizes what a key role HPs have in shaping population
behaviour change.
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