Pals Officer

Working as a member of the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) team to ensure the service provides an impartial, personal, effective and efficient PALS function to patients, relatives and carers. This includes liaising with frontline staff to manage and respond to concerns in line with Trust policy and procedures. Working closely with Trust staff to resolve concerns in a timely and efficient way in order achieve the best possible outcome. Provide a visible and effective PALS by ensuring patients, service users, carers and the public have access to and receive timely and high quality information, advice and signposting about the Trust’s activities. To provide a confidential listening service to patients/relatives/carers/users concerns.

1) Be responsible for listening, understanding and analysing problems being presented by patients, relatives and carers and assessing individual situations to identify the most appropriate way of resolving the problem.

2) Assess the most appropriate approach to resolving issues through negotiation with the patient and staff involved using knowledge of the Trust’s structures and operational procedures whilst aiming to achieve timely local resolution.

4) Directly problem-solve minor concerns on behalf of the enquirer and feed more complex or formal issues to divisional patient experience staff or into the complaints process.

5) Manage an individual caseload of concerns, from initial contact to liaising with clinical staff and senior managers who are responsible for assisting in resolving concerns

6) Provide non-clinical advice to patients/clients and be responsible for escalating a concern or complaint where patient safety appears to be at risk.

7) Ensure that concerns brought to PALS are dealt with effectively and that people using the PALS have access to external or specialist advocacy services when appropriate.

8) Identify areas of good and bad practice from information gathered from their contact with the public.

9) Provide information on all aspects of the Trust and its services to ensure contact with the hospital is as easy as possible.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital services to a growing population of around 700,000 people living across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas across two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Both hospital sites offer key services such as A&E, Obstetrics-led Maternity and Paediatrics.

You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career.

We have state-of-the art facilities placing us at the heart of cutting edge health care. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.

Please review all documents attached to this advert to ensure you familiarise yourself with all requirements of the job.

The Job Description and Person Specification are attached to this job, please review for the full details and responsibilities.

Develop and maintain effective working relationships with clinical and non-clinical staff across directorates and departments.
Demonstrate a helpful and proactive approach to cross cover and teamwork so that patients and visitors are provided with a helpful, compassionate and sensitive service across all aspects of the PALS team
Build and maintain constructive working relationships with other PALS services, statutory organisations, advocacy services, voluntary services and other stakeholders in the local health economy.
Assess the most effective approach to resolving concerns through knowledge of the organisation and the roles of the staff within it
Investigate and deal with concerns in a timely fashion, reassuring and communicating with patients/relatives/users/carers in order to reduce the likelihood of formal complaints.