Personal Assistant | Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Posting date:	01 July 2025
Salary:	Not specified
Additional salary information:	£26,530 - £29,114 per annum
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	31 July 2025
Location:	Prescot, L35 5DR
Company:	St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	7319124/409-IST7212379

Summary

The Medicine and Urgent Care Division has an opportunity for a Personal Assistant to join its existing team. The role will be to provide comprehensive secretarial support primarily to the Divisional Director of Operations and other Senior Managers within Urgent and Emergency Care.

The post holder will be expected to work with the minimum of supervision, using their own initiative, and will carry out duties of the post in such a way as to make a direct and positive contribution to the organisation by enabling the Urgent & Emergency Care Senior Team to utilise their time in an efficient and effective manner.

The successful candidate will be expected to demonstrate a flexible approach to meet the needs of the service and provide high quality P.A.
support including diary management, scheduling and attending meetings, minute taking and the screening of emails, production of reports and
presenting/disseminating key information/statistics . You will need to be an effective gatekeeper, using your judgement to resolve difficult
situations, whilst making decisions regarding appropriateness and priorities along with excellent interpersonal skills and knowledge of all the relevant administrative and P.A. procedures applicable to the role.

The role will also involve contact on a daily basis with a wide range of stakeholders, both internal and external to the organisation, and therefore requires a confident approach to create and maintain effective working relationships.

Provide comprehensive confidential administrative/ secretarial service to the Care Group Management Team inclusive (but not limited to)
Divisional Director, Directorate Managers Associate / Assistant Directorate Managers, Head of Quality, Governance Team and Matrons:
necessitating contact with external bodies, clinical, nursing, management, executive and clerical staff. Supporting the full governance agenda
across the Care Group for all staff within the Management Team. Cross cover is required when secretarial colleagues are on annual/study or sick
leave.

Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust serves a population of over 600,000 with a workforce of over 10,500 dedicated and skilled staff across 21 sites.

We strongly believe that the communities we serve should all have access to Five Star Patient Care.

Our services:

Acute Care

Providing emergency and maternity services at Whiston, Southport and Ormskirk hospitals, and medical and surgical specialties across all our sites.

Primary Care

Providing primary care services at Marshalls Cross Medical Centre situated in St Helens Hospital.

Community Services

Providing adult community services for St Helens and a wheelchair service in Chorley, South Ribble, and West Lancashire. Our inpatient unit at Newton Community Hospital is where patients needing acute hospital beds can continue rehabilitation. We also provide urgent care at our Urgent Treatment Centre located in St Helens town centre.

Specialist Regional Services

We provide the Mersey Regional Burns & Plastic Surgery Unit at Whiston Hospital and the Spinal Injuries Unit at Southport Hospital to more than 4 million people across the whole of Merseyside, West Lancashire, Cheshire, Isle of Man and North Wales.

Achievements:
• Rated Outstanding by CQC Inspection August 2018
• Top 100 places to work in the NHS (NHS Employers & Health Service Journal)
• National Preceptorship Accreditation (2023) for Nursing & AHP Preceptorship Programme

• To organise and manage the diaries of the Assistant Director, Directorate Managers Associate / Assistant Directorate Managers, Head of
Quality, Governance Team and Matrons providing a first class secretarial service and ensuring their daily workload and priorities are met.
• Manage any generic mailboxes and calendars within the Care Group as requested by the Management team
• Plan and organise meetings for the Care Group Management Team, liaising with staff across multidisciplinary settings. Arrange and circulate
agendas and any paperwork that is required, ensuring this is available for the meeting in appropriate format. Keeping attendance lists. This is also
inclusive but not limited to, taking minutes at any required meeting, type and distribute electronic or hard copies of minutes. Typing back at
meeting recordings as requested. Ensuring the dissemination of information in required time frames.
• To prioritise workload ensuring that required reports of a highly confidential nature are provided as requested inclusive of but not limited to,
agendas, minutes, meeting notes, telephone call logs, complaint statements, StEIS and/ Serious Incidents Requiring Investigation reporting
documentation, are all saved to a groups folder, so all staff are able to access. Do not save any documentation to your own personal folder.
• To act as a point of contact within the Care Group, Trust and to external users ensuring that communication links are maintained at all times.

• To produce and circulate rota’s as requested by the Care Group Management Team. Including liaising with all levels of staff, internally and
externally.
• To support and assist in the collation of information for the management team, for weekend plan, Easter plan, Christmas plan and any other
additional plans that may be required.
• To collate the cancelled operations data from the previous day, and ensure that the daily sitrep are completed within the time frame required.
All patient level data is checked and submitted onto the cancelled operations database daily.
• Produce high quality letters and reports using detailed knowledge of software packages such as Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Access and
Powerpoint.
• To co-ordinate additional activity payments for relevant specialties and ensure signed off appropriately with Manager.
• Ensure that any correspondence and communication is uploaded and recorded in real time on the Datix system for all complaints, telephone
calls, incidents, panels, risk register, StEIS reporting as required by the management team.
• To be the cover for the Complaints Co-ordinator, and ensure focus for patients, relatives and carers, contacting them on receipt of complaint to
explain the complaints process, agree time frame. Communicate with all levels of staff to ensure statements are received and escalate to the
Directorate Manager in a timely manner.
• On receipt of statements ensure all aspects of complaint have been answered and addressed then give to Directorate Managers to collate a
response for the complainant.
• Update weekly complaint working paper, monitor and chase up complaint statements on a daily basis and escalate to Directorate Manager.
• Arrange and attend complaint meetings taking minutes and transcribe back in a timely manner to send out to complainants.
• Maintenance of annual leave and sickness records for Management Team and any teams that may fall within this remit, recording on either
ESR, or eRoster
• Taking receipt of recording of travel claims and preparation of Staff Variation Lists (SVL) and ensure that ESR is kept up to date in real time.
• Arrange any training or education events, this includes booking venues and hospitality. Design Flyers and send information out in advance to
attendees and keep a record of attendance.
• Copy typing or audio typing as appropriate within the role and directed by the management team to assist with meetings and any governance
panels.
• To assist with typing of clinics as directed by the Administration Services Manager or Associate Directorate Manager if workload reviewed and appropriate.
• Carry out any auditing or validation of patient waiting lists, or patient details as and when requested by the management team
• Search the intranet and internet for particular policies and guidelines as requested by the Care Group Management Team.
• Working as a team to ensure that adequate stationary and relevant stocks within the department are kept to an acceptable level.
• Prepare Human Resources administration as necessary, including staff change of details forms, TRACs, variation forms, termination forms.
Ensure that any new starters forms are completed, and orientation programmes are collating prior to a member of staff starting in post.
• Co-ordinate and monitor compliance with mandatory training and appraisal activity for the Care Group and reporting compliance.
• To undertake tasks delegated by the Managers to assist in meeting activity targets and delivering Key Performance Indicators, ensuring
deadlines are met.
• Provide administrative and secretarial support to all Managers/Matrons within the Department and Trust in the absence of her/his Secretary.
• Respond to requests for information from service users and others who call the department, in person or by telephone, with tact and sensitivity.
Give appropriate non- clinical advice and refer on to the most suitable person, ensuring that all queries are followed up as soon as possible.
• Maintain accurate and efficient records, manage filing and brought forward systems. Suggest and implement new and improved systems and
ways of working where this will improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Deal effectively with mail, e-mails, telephone inquiries and facsimiles from within and outside of the Trust, communicating all relevant
information to the Manager/Matron as appropriate.
• To co-operate with the introduction of new technologies.
• Ensure complaints are investigated in accordance with Trust Directive. To assist senior members of staff and all wards in ensuring targets are
achieved. To provide day-to-day guidance to all staff involved in complaints handling
• To work closely with Senior Members of the Care Groups and Complaints coordinators and follow up statements daily with all disciplines of the Trust.
•Deal with telephone complaints appropriately.
• Ensure that matters of a confidential nature, including information relating to staff and patients, are not divulged to any unauthorised person.
• Take part in the Trust appraisal process, agreeing objectives and a personal development plan on a yearly basis.
• Attend mandatory training and maintain up to date administrative and secretarial skills. Partake in any training that may be recommended in
terms of personal development.
• Retrieval of case sheets from Records Department as and when required, whether in hard copy or printing from system (EDMS) and also
accessing the Trust’s Medway database for patient details and timelines as and when required.
• Deal with patient inquiries and pass on information either verbally or written.
• Cross Cover for all other administration staff within the care group management office in the absence of staff due to annual leave and sickness


This advert closes on Tuesday 15 Jul 2025

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