Icu Patient Care Assistant

**Location**:
Highlands Road, Shirley, Solihull

Hours:
Full time

Practice:
Willows Veterinary Centre and Referral Service

**J**ob Title**: PCA - **ICU **Patient Care A**ssistant**

**Salary**: Tier 1 scale of the PCA banding

Location: Willows Veterinary Centre

**Job Type**: Full Time Position

Hours: 38 hours averaged per week
- 1:5 weekend shifts

**Your role and responsibilities**

The successful applicant will work as part of the Clinical Support Team to provide consistently high standards of patient care and as well as ensuring practice standards are maintained to a high quality.

This position offers an opportunity to gain experience in patient care, as well as developing both your animal-care skills and technical knowledge. You will be working in a busy environment as part of a large multidisciplinary team, where no two days are the same. Our expectation of you is that you take the highest level of care, have pride in your work and use your initiative in creating a better world for pets.

Our Patient Care Assistants undertake a variety of duties as directed by the Veterinary Surgeons and/or Registered Veterinary Nurses, and duties or responsibilities may include:

- Care of in-patients within the wards including (feeding, medicating, walking patients, patient care, cleaning tasks etc)
- Patient restraint
- Implementation of appropriate infection control measures throughout the hospital to include regular cleaning schedules as per specified area checklists

This is a great opportunity to an individual wishing to start a career in clinical support. Many of our patient care assistants have gone on to have successful careers in veterinary nursing. Full support and training will be provided.

**Benefits**
- 5 weeks holiday plus bank holidays and Birthday Leave
- External CPD funded
- Extensive free online Linnaeus CPD program
- Career progression opportunities
- Staff discount schemes
- Life Assurance
- Enhanced sickness pay
- Enhanced equal family leave
- E-car salary sacrifice scheme
- Employer contribution pension scheme
- Wellness program including:

- Employee assistance program
- Eyecare voucher scheme
- Free annual Flu jab
- Cycle to work scheme
- Recruitment referral reward scheme

**About us**

Willows Veterinary Centre and Referral Service is one of the leading small animal referral centres in the world, having been delivering the highest possible standard of pet healthcare for over 30 years.

Our vision is to provide an unrivalled clinical, patient, client and team experience that is recognised for excellence across the world. Our values centre around the care of our patients, our clients, our referring vets, each other, and the environment to make A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS.

Willows is widely known for the delivery of CPD, and we strongly encourage all our associates to continually develop their skills and knowledge. We employ over 250 Associates working as part of an outstanding multi-disciplinary team led by internationally-renowned Specialists. Our service teams include orthopaedics, neurology, ophthalmology, internal medicine, clinical nutrition, oncology, soft tissue surgery, cardiology, dermatology, Emergency and Critical Care (ECC), anaesthesia and analgesia, diagnostic imaging and physiotherapy.

In-patient care is a priority and includes 24-hour veterinary and nursing cover, with support from a team of emergency vets and Interns. Our hospital facilities are of the highest quality, including on-site Siemens 64-slice CT, Siemens 1.5T MRI, two in-theatre mobile image intensifiers, two digital radiography rooms, ultrasonography, electro diagnostics, video endoscopy and an extensive range of advanced surgical equipment.

At Linnaeus, we are committed to supporting the physical and mental health of all our Associates. We have an amazing team of Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA) across our practices and central support office in addition to a confidential Employee Assistance Programme which is available for everyone.

**Part of an amazing global family**

Being part of this amazing global group gives us the benefit of a huge network of experts and specialists, a future we can invest in and the security that allows us to concentrate on what we do best - caring for pets. We are proud to count some of the finest specialists, veterinary surgeons and nurses in the UK among our team. Being part of the Mars family of businesses provides huge development opportunities across the group for our Associates.

The future of the veterinary world is at the heart of everything we do. We are all individual but two important things bring us together: a commitment to excellence and our passion to make **A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS**.

Linnaeus is owned by Mars, that makes us part of their 70,000 Veterinary Health Associates who spend their days thinking about the 400 million pets of the world and how to improve their lives. Being part of this amazing global group gives us the benefit of a huge network of experts