Medical Secretary

Job overview

East Lancashire Teaching Hospital has a busy thriving Ear, Nose & Throat Department department at the Blackburn General Hospital site.

We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual to join the Medical secretary team on a 12 month secondment to cover for maternity leave.

Main duties of the job

The role of the Medical Secretary is to provide a comprehensive secretarial, administration and information service to the general surgery Department Consultants and nurses in respect of his/her NHS work and to the supporting medical team. The role comprises a wide range of specific duties and requires competence in word processing, keyboard skills, audio-typing, communication and organisation skills. An ability to understand the need for and to maintain confidentiality is essential.

Working for our organisation

Established in 2003 East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) is a large integrated health care organisation providing high quality acute secondary healthcare for the people of East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen.

Our vision is to be widely recognised for providing safe, personal and effective care. We currently provide high quality services and treat over 700,000 patients a year from the most serious of emergencies to planned operations and procedures. We employ over8,000 staff, many of whom are internationally renowned and have won awards for their work and achievements.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. Transcription and production, from digital dictation, audio tape or shorthand, of typewritten reports/correspondence, using work processing packages, for the Consultant Team, which may include coroners’ reports, complaint responses, referral letters to other specialists, GPs and under x-ray letters.
2. Open and prioritise correspondence (which is often of a highly sensitive and confidential nature) on behalf of the consultants ensuring that urgent correspondence received prompt attention. In the consultant’s absence, the Medical secretary is responsible for ascertaining which correspondence requires referral to an appropriate clinician for urgent attention.
3. Retrieve and act upon correspondence received by post or email.
4. Process case notes of patients discharged from hospital; follow through ongoing care plans as indicated in notes. Allocate notes to relevant clinician for dictation, or ensure that any standard letters are completed as appropriate. Where standard letters have been generated at ward level, ascertain from case notes whether any supplementary letter/action is required and deal with appropriately. Ensure that follow up appointments or referrals to other specialties are arranged where necessary. Ensure the relevant investigation results received after patient discharge are communicated to GPs where appropriate, particularly where treatment may be required.
5. Ensure that discharge summaries and other time-sensitive information are dictated and typed within the designated time limits.
6. Receive, manage and prioritise telephone and personal enquiries, complaints, messages and information from patients, General Practitioner, Consultants and other medical staff and external organisations on behalf of the Consultant and clinical team. Deal with enquiries relating to the medical and social welfare of patients and relatives in a sensitive manner, referring to medical staff or other Healthcare Professionals where appropriate. When responding to enquiries, ensure that relevant guidelines or protocols are followed.
7. Respond to enquiries from patients and healthcare personnel as appropriate. Provide empathy and reassurance to patients where necessary. May be required to convey clinical/medical information to patients, medical, nursing, pharmacy or other healthcare staff, when instructed by, or with permission of the Consultant.
8. Manage patient investigation results. Check all incoming laboratory/radiology results (including urgent radiology results received via the PACS email reporting system and subsequent follow up radiology results) ensuring that abnormal results are communicated promptly to the appropriate clinician, typing up subsequent correspondence to GPs, patients and other departments and recalling patients where necessary, under the Consultant’s instruction. Keeping an electronic record of all urgent radiology results and follow up radiology results including the relevant actions taken and outcomes.
9. Participate in the training and supervision of junior staff i.e. support secretaries as appropriate.
10. Undertake self supervision and effective self organisation in terms of:
11. Co-ordinating annual leave and other leave in co-operation with other secretaries, and with the approval of management;
12. Liaising with other secretaries to ensure fair distribution of work by mutual assistance.
13. Liaising with manager and other secretaries regarding any flexi-time arrangements within the office.

• Establish and maintain efficient office systems, including filing systems and maintain a booking out and/or booking in system for case notes.
• Co-ordinate complaints by allocating to the relevant consultant on their specified administration days by checking consultant rotas. Collating all necessary background information for the Consultant to enable them to respond within the deadline. Type up the consultant complaint responses, consultant to check responses before ED PA sends to Acute PA for formal responses.
• Maintain confidentiality at all times, ensuring that information is only divulged to authorised sources and by appropriate means.
• Co-ordinate all department teaching sessions i.e. speakers, room bookings and production of teaching programmes.
• Arranging consultant CPD sessions, which involve allocating speakers and programmes along with the consultant agenda for their monthly meeting.
• Input and extract data from patient administration system (PAS/Patient Centre) and other relevant software programmes, which may be Trust wide or specialty specific (e.g ICE and Winscribe).
• Process documentation and correspondence for Senior and Junior Medical Staff (e.g. travel claims, family planning claims, references) liaising with medical staffing and bodies such as General Medical Council where necessary.
• Provide administrative and secretarial support for consultant’s non-clinical NHS obligations and commitments.

Person specification Experience Essential criteria

• •Ability to produce neat and accurate documentation.
• •Computer literate.
• •RSA/OCR III Typewriting or RSA/OCR Audio Typewriting Stage III or RSA/OCR III Word Processing or ULCI typewriting Grade 4 or equivalent qualification
• •5 GCSE at A – C grades or grade 9-4 including GCSE English or equivalent qualifications
• •Knowledge of medical terminology (medical terminology certificate) or AMSPAR certificate or 12 months secretarial experience or 6 months secretarial experience
• •Ability to work as part of a team and be supportive to other team members.
• •Medical secretarial experience in a hospital setting.

Desirable criteria

• •Winscribe digital dictation system or similar.
• •ICE – Results
• •Cerner – patient administration system

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