Medical Secretary, Cardiology, Band 3

Job overview

A permanent position at 30 hours a week

The post-holder will provide an efficient, confidential and professional secretarial service to a consultants and their supporting team. This will include administration and secretarial support to enable provision of patient care and specialty services. Good communication with patients, relatives, general practitioners and other hospital staff is essential to ensure a proficient, high-quality service for patients and clinicians. The post-holder will be expected to work as part of the Cardiology team and also support the wider secretarial team as needed.

Main duties of the job

Medical secretaries are responsible for:

Providing a comprehensive secretarial and administrative service to the medical staff and their supporting team.

Providing cover for colleagues in their absence to maintain service levels. Ensuring excellent communication is provided to patients, relatives, general practitioners and other hospital staff to ensure a proficient, high-quality service for patients and clinicians.

Ensuring all clinics are used to their full capacity and that any vacant slots are fully utilised and acted upon, including informing the Booking Office, to maximise capacity.

Regularly informing the secretarial supervisor about progress and flags up as a matter of urgency any issues, for example, capacity or delays due to internal or external factors, difficult queries from patients, etc.

Carrying out regular review and administrative validation of the clinician’s return outpatient wait list.

Supporting the achievement of Trust performance by ensuring administrative standards are met e.g., typing times, test results passed to clinician and any potential 52-week breaches are escalated to the clinician, secretarial supervisor or AGM/DGM to avoid breach.

Ensuring all clinic cancellations/alterations are dealt with efficiently and in line with the Trust’s 8 week annual/study leave policy.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Whilst the organisation and structure within specialities/divisions may vary the specific remit of this role will include:

Typing correspondence to patients, GPs, medical staff and any other required addressee following clinical attendance or other patient contacts using digital dictation or via Dragon voice recognition.

Typing detailed medical reports when necessary.

Take and transcribe minutes as appropriate.

Highlighting to the clinical team members any results, correspondence or patient queries that need response and taking action e.g. booking investigations, transcription, etc.

Ensuring incoming post and results is sorted, any appropriate action taken and passed to the clinician on a daily basis.

Ensuring that any vacant slots are fully utilised and acted upon, including informing the Booking Office, to maximise capacity.

Deal with enquiries by letter/e-mail/telephone from patients, GP’s, other hospitals, police, solicitors (via legal department), other consultants and management.

Origination of procedures in negotiation with the clinical staff and patients as requested by the secretary supervisor. This includes identifying potential dates with the clinical team, negotiation of dates with the patient and any additional co-ordination of staff, equipment, stock, facilities, external support (company representatives) and paperwork.

Regularly informing the secretarial supervisor about progress and flagging up as a matter of urgency any issues, for example, capacity or delays due to internal or external factors, difficult queries from patients, etc.

Liaising with external organisations for the benefit and progress of patient care, such as Social Services, other hospitals, etc.

Support the development of improvements to working practices and processes and contribute to service reviews and the implementation of new arrangements.

As directed, support the resolution of complaints or concerns from patients/carers by helping to collate information and work with the supervisor to respond or escalate appropriately.

To work as part of an Administrative Support Team working flexibly to ensure that administrative work is shared out equally and performed to excellent, efficient and safe standards.

To cover colleagues during absences/annual/sick leave as directed by the secretary supervisor. You may also be required to undertake job rotation for cross cover as well as for development and training purposes.

Undertake routine office duties including electronic note tracking, photocopying, faxing, filing of correspondence and results and maintenance of records in the absence of the band 2 clerical assistant.

Assist in the training and induction for new and existing colleagues. Take the initiative as and when required as well as working flexibly and adapting to the demands of the department/team as appropriate.

Undertake any other appropriate duties commensurate with the role, as required at the request of your line manager.

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.