Medical Secretary, Ophthalmology

Job overview

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 specialism.

Please be advised that sponsorship is not eligible for this post.

Closing Date: Please be advised that this job advert will close as soon as sufficient applications have been received. Please apply for this job as soon as you can, if interested.

Main duties of the job

• Act as the senior administrative contact for patients, clinicians and staff, ensuring enquiries are handled efficiently, resolved promptly and appropriately documented.
• Manage and maintain clinical records and correspondence, ensuring patient documentation is accurate, up to date, available for clinical decision-making, and distributed in a timely manner.
• Monitor and manage patient pathways, including understanding and applying Referral to Treatment (RTT) requirements to ensure patients progress through their care pathway within national targets.
• Coordinate patient care administration by working closely with booking, outpatient, theatre, diagnostic and ward teams to maintain accurate waiting lists, optimise clinic utilisation and support seamless patient journeys.
• Provide comprehensive administrative support to consultants and clinical teams, including diary management, meeting coordination, minute taking, report preparation, correspondence management and office administration.
• Support service improvement and performance monitoring through project work, data collection, report production, use of Trust IT systems, and contributing ideas to improve patient services and business processes.
• Support, train and supervise colleagues, sharing knowledge, maintaining high standards of practice, providing cross-cover during absences and assisting with the induction and development of staff.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• 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 ensure, wherever possible, 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 understand Referral to Treatment (RTT) clock, ensuring pathways are followed and completed.
• To ensure the effective organisation of all patients under the care of the consultant and his/her team in accordance with Local and National policy and targets. This will require effective collaboration with: the Booking Centre and Patient Access team to ensure the waiting list is up-to date and accurate at all times; Outpatient Access team and General Managers to monitor the utilisation and effectiveness of outpatient clinics, ensuring that established Patient Access Policy and procedures are adhered to; Theatre, Diagnostic and Ward teams to ensure that the elective care pathway for all patients is seamless and sensitive to their needs.
• To implement and maintain an efficient office management system/procedure to enable the consultant and his/her team to optimise their patient care services. This will require: effective management of the consultant’s time, managing schedules and leave arrangements ensuring appropriate and timely communications with all relevant personnel; arranging meetings/events; composing and transcribing minutes proactively ensuring action points are raised and completed, preparation of correspondence and reports; effective management of the consultant’s office by establishing and maintaining efficient manual and electronic correspondence and documentation management systems; ensuring office equipment and stationery levels are maintained, processing orders as required.
• To continually contribute to patient and business improvement Agendas.
• This will require: undertaking any project work as directed, including obtaining information from the Internet, collation and reporting of data in order to produce reports and spreadsheets, utilising relevant Trust IT systems, as determined by the role, ensuring all relevant patient data is collected and input accurately in line with Trust guidelines. These systems may include Revenue Cycle, Powerchart, Appointment Book etc. Share ideas for potential service improvement.
• To support team members. This will require: demonstrating and explaining Departmental practices and procedures; undertaking appropriate training and development with new and existing staff ensuring high standards of practice are maintained at all times; providing cross-cover on a reciprocal basis in the absence of colleagues and providing day to day supervision where required.

For further details please see the attached job description.

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.