Medical Secretary

Job overview

To provide comprehensive and high quality secretarial, administrative and clerical support to the department ensuring an effective and efficient service is delivered.

To support the Admin Team Leader to undertake change management.

To ensure that patients are treated with courtesy, dignity and respect.

The most rewarding part of this role is providing a high standard of administrative assistance to clinicians, patients, carers, relatives, outside agencies and the overall team ensuring they are all well supported.

The post holder works with very little supervision, prioritising and manging their own workload on a day to day basis.

Main duties of the job

To ensure all results of tests and investigations are tracked effectively, shown to the relevant consultant promptly and to undertake appropriate action as instructed.  To independently deal with patient/carer telephone calls and enquiries in an efficient, sensitive and confidential manner, exercising judgement to analyse and resolve any problems and referring on to the clinician as appropriate.  All clinic outcomes must be recorded accurately and complete or amend any that have not been done.

Clinical diaries (both paper and electronic) are to be maintained and checked against the published timetables. Discretion and initiative used when arranging meetings and appointments for patients, relatives and others.

• To ensure that arrangements regarding medical staff leave and cover arrangements are circulated appropriately and that clinical activities are amended accordingly. Taking and transcribing formal minutes if required. To open and act on correspondence received and bring to the attention of the clinician along with the medical notes To undertake a variety of office duties such as filing, opening and distributing post, photocopying, moving and lifting of patient notes to ensure the efficient and effective support to the department. To plan and organise own workload efficiently and to highlight any concerns to the Admin Team Leader To produce and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for all aspects of the Medical Secretary role.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To work closely with all grades of clinical and administrative staff, along with other employees within the Trust. To liaise with patients, GP’s and other external agencies. This position requires empathy and tact when dealing with patients that may be angry or upset regarding any aspect of their care. To review discharge summaries and ensure investigations/appointments are booked appropriately To train and support new/less experienced staff within the team To ensure that private, overseas and Scottish/Welsh and Northern Irish patients for out/in-patients are identified and documented appropriately. To support any Secretarial Assistants within the department in their role and ensure compliance with Standard Operating Procedures.

To communicate effectively in writing and verbally on a daily basis.

• To ensure that all clinical and non-clinical correspondence is typed within local targets, using the Infoflex system. (Audio and copy typing). Ensure appropriate follow up is actioned i.e. outpatient appointments, investigations, patients added to waiting lists, referrals to other departments etc. To ensure that all results/reports/correspondence are filed in the hospital case notes in accordance with Health Records standards. To provide cover for other members of the whole Diabetes and Endocrinology team as required to ensure optimum efficiency of the department. To identify areas for service improvement and support implementation.  To comply with the Trust’s Patient Access Policy and Standard Operating Procedures. Any other appropriate duties/tasks as requested by management To enter, monitor and update all aspects of the Referral to Treatment (RTT) pathway events accurately and ensure Inter Provider Transfers (IPT) are completed and updated.  Review statuses are to be updated at every patient interaction. To manage the e-referral worklists on a daily basis. To use the relevant IT systems to register patients, respond to enquiries, make appointments, transfer medical records, input clinical letters and care planning summaries, as required Minute taking in admin team meetings where deemed appropriate Compilation of staff meeting agendas

Diary Management of specified clinical staff.

Action clinic changes making sure that all clinic forms have been actioned appropriately.