Ucr Healthcare Assistant

Exciting opportunity - Come join us.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join the expanding Urgent Community Response Team. We are looking for Healthcare Assistants who enjoy the diversity and variety of caring for patients in crises within their own home, as well as supporting people to have the best possible quality end of life care.

This role involves providing personal care, meal preparation and medication support, wound care, prompting prescribed exercise programmes, providing prescribed equipment and completing night-sits. Good communication and collaboration as part of the Urgent Community Response nursing and therapy team is essential. You will have regular supervision and professional development opportunities.

Urgent Community Response is a short term service, we make people safe and refer them on to other appropriate services as needed. Our focus is primarily admission avoidance to secondary care, keeping people safe in their own homes, including people at the end of their life, and also supporting discharges from secondary care or in-patient units.

Due to the success of our service within the Norwich Place, we are recruiting additional Band 3 Healthcare Assistants to the Urgent Community Response team at this Outstanding organisation. Working alongside our existing HCAs, our nurses and therapists, you will assist in ensuring the continued successful delivery of this service.

Main Duties & Responsibilities

Clinical

**The post holder will need**:
To work generically in provision of care, to patients under the supervision of a qualified practitioner, following a prescribed treatment/care plan in order to prevent admission to hospital.

Plan and prioritise own visits to delegated patients, and ensure these are documented in personal work diary

Ensure patient held records are completed for each visit, and that SystmOne inputting is completed on a daily basis.

Make basic judgements on patients’ response to prescribed treatment/care plans, and report findings to a qualified practitioner.

Liaise with other health care professionals as required.

Communicate with patients/carers by exchanging factual information, reassurance, tact and empathy.

Establish and maintain appropriate working relationships with colleagues, patients, carers and other health care professionals.

Demonstrate dexterity and coordination when undertaking treatment of patients where accuracy is important, e.g. taking blood sugars, venepuncture, supervising transfers, and passive exercises.

Be responsible for ensuring equipment is used safely, following relevant training, and that it is maintained appropriately.

Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of consent, and gain consent as appropriate following organisational policies.

Share responsibility of indirect patient contact tasks, such as, answering telephones, arranging appointments, processing referrals and inputting activity data.

Undertake health promotion / education as required, e.g. smoking cessation, falls etc.

Will be exposed to bodily fluids, infected material, blood products on a daily basis, therefore must utilise universal precautions and adhere to infection control policies.

Professional

**The post holder will**:
Attend and contribute to multi-disciplinary team meetings and other meetings where appropriate.

Attend in-house and competency training as required in development of current job role.

Work predominately independently on specified tasks, with regular clinical support and supervision by a qualified practitioner.

Be aware of limitations of own scope of practice and competency, and when to involve a more senior practitioner, both in daily practice and in emergency situations.

Acknowledge and recognise peoples’ expressed beliefs, preferences and choices.

To provide peer support to other assistants.

Actively contribute to team working and express ideas on improving services for users and the team.

Share responsibility for maintaining store cupboards, cleaning specialist equipment and general housekeeping tasks.

Organisational

**The post holder will**:
Undertake mandatory training as required.

Partake in the Personal Development Review process.

Follow Trust policies, and local procedures.

Be aware of Trust’s Behaviour Framework and ensure behaviours are embedded in role.

Ensure absence reporting is undertaken as determined by Team Leader and Trust policy.

Contribute to clinical audit as required.

Complete the staff survey as required.

Complete risk assessments and incident forms as required.

Take part in clinical supervision as per Trust policy.