Senior Secretary

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.
• To co-ordinate the delivery of a specialty specific single point of access for patients.
• 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.
• 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.
• To liaise professionally with all departments regarding admissions, waiting lists, ad hoc ward attenders and cancellations, ensuring hospital policies are adhered to.
• To complete ITT forms as required according to the Standard Operating Procedure.
• 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 obtain investigation results and exercise judgement to ensure that attention is urgently drawn to histology and urgent telephoned results.
• 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.
• 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.
• Maintain accurate contact lists for regular meetings ensuring attendees are added and deleted as appropriate.
• To ensure all secretarial team timesheets are accurate and up to date on a monthly basis.
• 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.
• To provide accurate, appropriate signposting to team members and to those who contact the team.
• 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 of Excel and Powerpoint

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.

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: , Telephone: . Please feel free to email with any queries. Telephone messages will be answered Mon - Fri 08:30 - 16:30.