Healthcare Assistant | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Are you ready to unlock your potential within a challenging, creative and fast paced work environment? Do you want to work with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past? This is an excellent opportunity for a healthcare assistant to join our team of diverse, talented healthcare professionals to deliver care that is not only efficient but deeply centred on the patient.

Our healthcare team have a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patient’s future resettlement back into the community. We directly deliver Mental Health, Physical Health, Pharmacy and Clinical Substance Misuse in an integrated healthcare delivery model to provide effective and responsive care to improve wellbeing and support better outcomes in the future.

Applicants are required to have hospital/primary care experience and be competent at taking blood pressure, ECGs and other observations. Knowledge of wound care is also a requirement for this post.

As a Healthcare Assistant you will assist in the delivery of high quality nursing care to patients in prison with the support of a registered nurse. You will be providing physical care to patients according to a written care plan. This will include taking blood pressures, ECG’s, other observations and wound care. You will be actively engaging with patients in the provision of holistic, needs-led care which will consider the physical, psychological, emotional, social and spiritual needs of the individual. You will be promoting health and well-being through the delivery of health promotion activities and programmes, responding to patients needs and assisting patients to attain optimal physical health.

Previous applicants need not apply.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We’re Kind
• We’re Fair
• We Listen
• We Care

Key Task and Responsibilities

• Responding to the needs of patients in an honest, non-judgemental, and open manner, which respects the rights of individuals and groups
• Actively engaging with patients in the provision of holistic, needs-led care which considers the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of individuals and groups
• Delivery of health promotion activities and programmes (including patient self-help programmes) in support of a registered healthcare professional
• Assisting patients to attain optimal physical health and assisting with physical procedures alongside a registered healthcare professional
• Contributing appropriately to risk assessment and individualised care planning.

Clinical

• To work as directed by a registered nurse, providing physical care to patients according to a written care plan. Typical duties include:
• Carrying out ECG’s
• Phlebotomy
• Basic wound care
• NEWS2
• Assess patients using NEWS2
• Assisting in emergency call outs and instigating emergency procedures when appropriate
• Being second checker on medication rounds
• Ordering and maintaining stock
• Ensuring treatment rooms are clean, tidy and well stocked
• Appropriate escalation to registered healthcare professionals

Custodial Responsibilities

• Assume personal responsibility for the security of issued keys.
• Understand and comply with prison orders, procedures, and instructions in your area of work.
• Comply with all security requirements.
• Respond to any situation or circumstance that might indicate a threat to security of the establishment or to the safety of an individual, completing Incident, Security, Injury, or other reports as appropriate.
• Report breaches of order and discipline including reporting and recording untoward incidents according to local protocol.
• Contribute to effective risk assessment and management procedures.

Sponsorship is not available for this post. All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

• Proof of right to work documentation
• Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID
• Proof of address documentation
• Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.

Address History: 5 years address history will be needed. Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously. Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants. If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website.

This advert closes on Thursday 6 Aug 2026.

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme.

About Disability Confident: Disability Confident is a government scheme. It encourages employers to recruit and retain disabled people and those with long term health conditions.