Consultancy in health psychology: an introduction

Abstract

I did my health psychology masters at Surrey University and went on to work in research. I worked for a year at the University of Surrey and then moved to Bexley Clinical Psychology Service where I worked for two years on a project to evaluate the primary care clinical psychology service. A key aspect of the service was providing consultancy to the GP teams in the practices where psychology was based. I received two years further funding and was interested in developing my role to involve both consultancy and training. I liaised with the health promotion service and eventually moved to work there managing a CHD prevention project that involved providing training and consultancy to primary care teams. During that time I completed my Masters in Occupational and Organisational Psychology and a consultancy skills course at the Tavistock. I now work as a Project Manager at the Health Education Authority as part of the professional development team. The broad responsibility of the team is to develop initiatives to support professionals with a remit for health promotion. The area I manage – called Learning at Work – specifically focuses on methods for workplace learning such as coaching and mentoring, supporting the use of the national occupational standards in health promotion and supporting the professional development of health promotion lecturers and educators.