Senior Secretary in Royal Leamington Spa

We are looking for an experienced senior secretary to work with the Community South Specialist Palliative Care Team. The Community Specialist Palliative Care Team is a busy team based in South Warwickshire Community. The ideal candidate will have previous experience within a senior secretarial role, confident and proficient in using MS office applications. You will be personable and dedicated to the role with outstanding attention to detail, comfortable with a challenging and variable workload. You will be able to work autonomously within a team and willing to provide support to the team as required. You will have a flexible approach to your work. Experience of the NHS is desirable, but not essential.

Main duties of the job

• To provide a specialised, comprehensive and confidential patient-centred clinical administration and secretarial service to consultants and their teams in accordance with Departmental, Trust and National standards, policies and procedures.
• To act as a source of advice and guidance regarding the specialty.
• To have an understanding on the importance/relevance of how to co-ordinate the management of the elective and/or emergency pathways to include Cancer, Referral to Treatment Targets (RTT) and Choose & Book and co-ordinate Specialist Palliative Care Multi-Disciplinary Team Meeting.
• Ensuring the role is deputised when taking planned absence.
• To co-ordinate the delivery of a specialty specific single point of access for patients.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To ensure that all clinical documentation is up to date, in an orderly fashion and available whenever clinical decisions are being made, reporting exceptional circumstances where necessary.
• This will require effective collaboration with all relevant personnel to maintain an efficient administrative system, prompt transcription, manipulation and distribution of appropriate correspondence.
• To request patient appointments (new and follow-up), liaising with the appropriate department.
• To act as a senior point of contact to ensure all enquiries are effectively managed and successfully resolved within a prompt timescale, ensuring all relevant personnel are informed as necessary and an appropriate record is maintained.
• To liaise professionally with all departments regarding admissions, waiting lists, ad hoc ward attenders and cancellations, ensuring hospital policies are adhered to.
• Have an understanding about how to update and maintain the 18wk RTT Status Manager to ensure accurate record keeping at all times.
• To complete ITT forms as required according to the Standard Operating Procedure.
• To co-operate in the introduction of new procedures, policies or technology, including any technology associated with the Patient Administration System, and assisting team leaders in its implementation.
• To set up and maintain electronic filing systems ensuring all documents are accurately and appropriately archived.
• To take responsibility for patients’ written information.
• To implement secretarial and administrative policies to track medical records using Lorenzo/Emis.
• To take responsibility of patient electronic records and ensure data is relevant, up to date and accurate, logging data where necessary.
• To obtain investigation results and exercise judgement to ensure that attention is urgently drawn to histology and urgent telephoned results and all results are filed in the patients’ records as set out in the Standard Operating Procedure.
• To compile and maintain up-to-date secretarial job plan/cover folder for the secretarial team.
• To open promptly and deal with appropriately any email correspondence.
• To action all routine, urgent and complex leave requests for the medical staff promptly in accordance with Trust Policy including completing the electronic session cancellation form and forwarding to the appropriate person within the given timescale.
• To maintain up-to-date timetables for the Consultants as and when required and provide appropriate secretarial support.
• Arrange meetings, composing and transcribing minutes proactively ensuring action points are raised and completed where necessary, and liaising with the Medical School/Medical Students as and when required.
• When appropriate re-arranging meetings to ensure that key stakeholders are present, with an understanding of clinical and managerial responsibilities of those needing to attend.
• Maintain accurate contact lists for regular meetings ensuring attendees are added and deleted as appropriate.
• In addition, monitor meeting attendance to ensure quorate is maintained.
• Manage changes to core meetings with clear communication to key stakeholders as to reasons why.
• To ensure all secretarial team timesheets are accurate and up to date on a monthly basis, including flexible working.
• To approve annual leave for the secretarial team electronically ensuring the office is covered during working hours.
• To participate in the recruitment and selection of new team members and organise their departmental induction.
• To support team members by demonstrating and explaining Departmental practices and procedures; undertaking appropriate training and development with new and existing staff ensuring high standards of practice are always maintained and providing day to day supervision where required.
• To provide accurate, appropriate signposting to team members and to those who contact the team.
• Ensure that policies, procedures and guidelines accurately reflect the current operational/strategic situation.
• To undertake appropriate administrative role required by the team to enable timely delivery of projects/deadlines.
• To receive calls to the team ensuring that callers are provided with clear and accurate information.

Person specification

• Qualifications: RSA III or equivalent speed and accuracy AMSPAR or equivalent training / experience (minimum 2 years Medical secretary experience).
• Experience: Previous involvement in delivery of service improvements. Working knowledge of Microsoft Office. Working knowledge of PAS or equivalent systems. 2 years secretarial/senior admin experience.
• Skills: Friendly and professional telephone manner. Good audio/copy typing skills. Ability to influence and engage others both at peer and a senior level. Good organisational skills and ability to prioritise tasks. Demonstrates potential to be able to work under pressure. Demonstrate understanding of patient confidentiality.
• Personal Qualities: Able to respond effectively to working alone or in a team. Ability to deal with distressing situations patients/relatives. Ability to use initiative. To be able to adapt to change.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust is committed to creating and sustaining a positive and inclusive working environment for all our employees. Our aim is to ensure that employees are equally valued and respected and that our organisation is representative of all members of society. We define diversity as valuing everyone as an individual – we value our employees, job applicants, students, patients and visitors as people. This is reflected within our values of being Inclusive, Safe, Effective, Compassionate and Trusted. South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust is an equal opportunities employer who is committed to Equality and Diversity and does not tolerate discrimination or harassment on the grounds of any protected characteristic as defined by the Equality Act 2010.

Employment benefits

• Car parking: limited availability, awaiting waiting list.
• Agile working: Staff may work from home regularly; some travel around Warwickshire required.
• Benefit scheme: Lease Car Scheme, Electronics Scheme, Discounted Leisure and Travel, Cycle to work scheme among others.

Important information

Sometimes we get a lot of applications for our roles. On those occasions we might close the job early. If you don’t want to miss out we recommend submitting your application as early as possible.

Contact details

Name: Paula Alsop, Lead Nurse Specialist Palliative Care Team, Email: paula.alsop@swft.nhs.uk, Telephone: 07557 520494. Please feel free to email with any queries. Telephone messages will be answered Mon - Fri 08:30 - 16:30.