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Health Psychology for Professionals

The information here is for professionals working with the Health Psychology service.

The Health Psychology Service is a service for adults.  Patients under 17 should be referred to the local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

Specialist Stroke services are delivered by Derbyshire Healthcare FT who have psychologists attached.  

Patients may be suitable for IAPT services where:

  • They have stable long term conditions.
  • There is little or no active medical intervention or co-morbidities.
  • They have health anxiety, but this is not in response to specific health problems.  

Please be aware that we offer short-term focussed psychological interventions aimed at helping people to make changes to their relationship with their health problems.  We do not have the capacity to offer long-term supportive counselling.

How to Refer

The typical referral process involves a referral in writing, giving basic information, including: 

  • Name.

  • Address.  

  • Date of birth.  

  • Some details about health status. 

  • Reason for referral.   

It is helpful if you can include any current or history of mental health difficulties and current or past contact with other mental health services.  

We are happy to receive oral communications (in person or by telephone) but would welcome a brief follow-up letter should referral be appropriate.  

We use a stepped care approach to triage all referrals.  Once a referral is accepted, patients are invited to opt in for assessment. They would normally be assessed within a few weeks of opting in.   

Following assessment, a patient will be discharged/ referred on, placed on a waiting list or offered more rapid contact.  For those patients waiting for follow-up, we will normally try to ensure that this is an “active wait” by, where relevant, providing information, advice and skills training.

Typically, we accept patient referrals for: 

  • Help with adjustment to and coping with physical health problems. 

  • Help with improving functioning and quality of life. 

  • Advice and training aimed at improving management or recovery. 

  • Assistance in making best use of physical interventions (e.g. phobias, compliance and motivational issues).

  • Assistance with mood where this makes health problems worse.

  • Treatment of psychological issues which are the cause of significant physical health problems.

Consultation and Training with DCHS Teams

We have a small number of psychologists working within DCHS who support teams with complex work or cases.  

These psychologists work alongside the Integrated Community Teams in the High Peak, Chesterfield and Derby City.  When we have capacity, we may accept requests from outside of these areas. 

Psychologists supporting teams do not have direct patient contact. They provide consultation to teams to support their work with patients through formulation, training, reflective spaces and coaching. Support is provided to individual staff members, whole teams and occasionally meetings such as MDTs (Multi Disciplinary Teams).

We are a service which provides staff consultation. Please note:

  • We do not offer psychological therapy to patients - this can be accessed via IAPT, Community Mental Health Teams, Health Psychology and others.
  • We do not complete patient assessments e.g. capacity assessments.
  • We are not a therapy service for staff (Resolve and Wellbeing are able to provide this).
  • We do not provide crisis support.
  • We are not a replacement for your usual supervision.

See the drop-down sections below, or email the team on health.psychology@nhs.net. They will then forward the query to a member of our team. If you work within the Integrated Community Teams in the High Peak, Chesterfield, or Derby, you can directly contact the psychologist in your area.

What kind of challenges can we help with? 

We can support teams in their work with patients where there is complexity which impacts on recovery and quality of life. Example patients may include:

  • High use of healthcare resources (e.g. high frequency of contact with health professionals).
  • Difficulty complying or engaging with treatment plans.
  • Difficulties in relationships with healthcare professionals.
  • Patients who keep coming back on the caseloads for similar reasons.
  • Patients who have been on the caseload a significant period. There may be significant barriers to change which are not solely due to physical health (e.g. anxiety, motivation, self-management, lifestyle factors).
  • Multiple physical health diagnoses. 

If you are unsure whether we can help, you are welcome to contact us to discuss.

How can psychology support our work with patients? 

We aim to be flexible and will tailor our support to meet your needs. Depending on your needs, those of the team and those of the patient, we may:

  • Work with you to develop a formulation. This aims to gain an understanding of the patient by considering their wider context. It also helps to identify factors that may be maintaining current challenges. The formulation may be used to support you in problem solving and identifying creative and alternative solutions to improve patient outcomes.
  • We may at times provide psychological ideas and techniques to help you in your work with your patient. 
  • Bring together the knowledge, skill and ideas already within the team.
  • Support you in building relationships and having meaningful, whilst difficult, conversations with your patient.
  • Help you feel more confident in supporting your patients with self-management of their physical health conditions.
  • Support teams to provide consistent care where there are factors which challenge this. 
  • Help teams explore their different experiences of and with the same patient.
  • Provide training specific to the needs of your team.
  • Provide reflective spaces where you can explore your experience(s) at work with the aim of promoting your skills, wellbeing, and the patient experience.
  • Facilitate group supervision for case discussion.
  • Both reflective spaces and group supervision may have patient or theme focus. Themes may include for example: working with loss, risk, working with families and carers, mental health and staff wellbeing to name a few.
  • We may be able to support you in signposting the patient to appropriate services, especially where there is a mental health need.
What should I expect from contact with the Psychology team?

There are a number of ways our team can help you. Our contact with staff members or teams can vary from one short phone call, to a series of meetings and potentially joining your visits with patients. We understand you may be unsure how your team may best be supported. You can get in touch with us for an initial discussion and we will work with you to find an option which works for you.  

We offer both virtual and in-person contacts and follow covid-19 guidance as set out by DCHS policy and Public Health England.  

Usually, we meet with a key member of the team understand the request and aims for psychology input. We would then meet with the team as agreed.  

For example, this might be three separate meetings to:

  1. Formulate the patient.
  2. Implement.
  3. Evaluate attempts to problem solve.  

Alternatively, it may be an agreed monthly reflective space facilitated by the psychologist.  

Smaller queries 

If your query does not require input from the whole team, often one half an hour phone call may be enough to support you in your work.   

We typically follow up patient related queries with a summary which will include:

  • Context.
  • Challenges.
  • Understanding.
  • Potential solutions.
Team support 

For in depth work supporting a team, it may occasionally be beneficial for us to join one of your appointments with the patient. This is to improve our formulation and to see first-hand the challenges you are facing.  This requires patient consent.  

Where helpful, we may also join MDT, CST and concerns meetings to support the formulation across the systems and providers involved in a patient’s care.  

Training 

We often deliver training to staff groups following requests for input. We have listed below some of the training sessions we have delivered to date:

  • Understanding and managing barriers to treatment adherence.
  • Working with patients with suicidal ideation.
  • Understanding and working with Functional neurological disorder (FND).
  • Supporting wellbeing at work. 
  • Psychological safety in teams.
  • Working with loss.
  • Helping patients to improve their motivation.
  • Psychological factors and lower limb wounds.
  • Working with mental capacity and unwise decisions.
  • Helping others to look after their health.
  • Psychological models and patient care - using Compassion Focussed Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to understand and support patients. 

Please contact us if you would like to discuss training for your team.

Derbyshire Psychological Insights Team

Derbyshire Psychological Insights Team works across Derbyshire and uses ideas and evidence from psychology and behavioural insights to help improve people's health and wellbeing. We do this through collaborating with teams and organisations to improve support and services for, and with, Derbyshire residents. 

Our projects include work with teams, services and organisations to:

  • Become more health literacy friendly.
  • Listen to and understand citizen's views to shape projects and services.
  • Evaluate services or activities to find out what is working well and less well.
  • To use behaviour change and psychology to share ideas and learning in creative and impactful ways.
  • Train and support staff to use ideas from psychology and behaviour change theory in their practice.
  • Test out new ways of doing things with services to address existing issues (for citizens or services) using psychological and behaviour change models.
  • Tailor existing support and services for those individuals in Derbyshire who face more barriers to health and wellbeing support.

If you would like further information about how the Psychological Insights Team may be able to collaborate with your service, please contact our Principal Clinical Psychologist, Dr Jo Hall on jo.hall@derbyshire.gov.uk or jo.hall1@nhs.net.

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