Medical Laboratory Assistant

Job Overview

We have an exciting opportunity for a dynamic individual with excellent interpersonal skills to become part of our team within the Wexham Park Hospital Microbiology Specimen Reception Department.

Excellent typing skills, an eye for detail and a positive approach are absolutely essential.

Please note: this role is not suitable for recent graduates looking for progression into the Biomedical Scientist role.

Main duties of the job

You will need to be organised, yet flexible and a good team player, yet comfortable working on your own; in addition to a friendly and approachable personality. Your role will be varied with duties including the receipt, sorting and preparation of patient samples, bodily fluids and other general laboratory and clerical duties.

Purpose Of Job

To work with other members of staff to provide an efficient and effective service to all users of the Pathology department. To ensure the rapid and timely turnaround of Pathology samples by receiving, labelling and entering onto the Pathology computer system.

The Pathology Laboratory is situated in Wexham Park Hospital and part of Berkshire Surrey Pathology Services (BSPS) which is a successful and progressive merged pathology network which is a contractual joint venture between Ashford & St Peter’s, Frimley Health, Royal Berkshire and Royal Surrey County Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts. It provides services to NHS Acute Trusts, CCGs, academic centers, and the private healthcare sector undertaking approximately 20 million tests per year serving a population of 2 million. We provide a service 7 days a week.

Working for our organisation

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust is committed to being an inclusive and disability confident employer and has been awarded the Gold for the Armed Forces Employment Recognition Scheme. We provide first class development opportunities for all staff and have a wide range of professional, management and leadership, and clinical skills training available.

Here at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, we know how important it is to have a healthy work life balance; this benefits not only individuals but the patients we care for too.

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service and its users.

Frimley Health Trust benefits on Vimeo

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

• To maintain good communication with the Specimen Reception Team Leader in order to minimise errors and maximise efficiency through agreed priorities and to achieve the aim of completing all work within the working day.
• To maintain a close working relationship with senior laboratory staff.
• To assist in the electronic production and distribution of Pathology reports by post or fax.
• To deal with telephone enquires directed to Specimen Reception to give Pathology results for Microbiology, where appropriate and to re-direct calls to the various laboratories.
• Verbal contact with external laboratories on those tests not performed in-house.
• To inform relevant requesting Consultants, Doctors or nursing staff over the phone and face-to-face when incorrect sample or information is received.
• To provide information to all users on the appropriate specimen collection procedure, under the guidelines of the Pathology Handbook.
• To receive all visitors to the laboratory in a professional and courteous manner.
  
  

Please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Good basic education
  
  

Desirable criteria

• Interest in working to higher level of qualification
  
  

Willingness to work

Essential criteria

• Cover different shift pattern
• Be prepared to volunteer when there is need
• Be willing to learn and help any shift as needed
  
  

Desirable criteria

• Work weekends and late shifts
  
  

Experience

Essential criteria

• Good keyboard skills
• Experience of working in a busy environment
• Good team player
  
  

Desirable criteria

• Ability to work on own
• Experience of working in a specimen reception department in pathology
• Experience working with Laboratory applications Winpath, Enterprise etc.
  
  

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (FHFT) has an outstanding reputation and a proud record of achievement. As a well performing, well led and ambitious Foundation Trust, we have exciting times ahead of us. We have an ongoing commitment to improving the health and care services for the 900,000 people we serve across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.

We are proud of the ambitions laid out in our strategy, Our Future FHFT, including our vision to be a leader in health & wellbeing, delivering excellence for our communities.

We continue to invest in our services and facilities, including a £10 million upgrade to the hospital maternity unit as well as £49m major new Emergency Assessment Centre on our Wexham Park site. The opening of a brand new £100m state of the art hospital which replaced the existing hospital facility at Heatherwood and are planning to invest further in diagnostics and inpatient capacity at Frimley Park.

We have also made significant investment in our quality improvement and digital programmes to support our vision and we will ensure that we achieve our aim of providing the highest quality healthcare to our patients. Our new EPR – Epic – went live in June and we are already beginning to reap the benefits of this ambitious investment.

Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.

Apply online now