Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

• Act as the first point of contact for the Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) and Hearing Therapy Service, responding professionally and sensitively to telephone calls, emails, voicemails, and other enquiries from patients, carers, healthcare professionals, and external agencies.
• Sort, prioritise, and distribute incoming correspondence, ensuring urgent matters are escalated promptly, and administrative tasks are prioritised appropriately.
• Receive, process, and manage written and verbal referrals, ensuring referrals are actioned within agreed timescales and in accordance with service procedures.
• Support outpatient clinic administration, including appointment booking, clinic preparation, waiting list management, patient transport arrangements, interpreter bookings, and communication of appointment information.
• Provide patients and their families with clear and accessible information regarding appointments and services, adapting communications to meet individual needs, including alternative formats where required.
• Maintain accurate, confidential, and up-to-date patient records using Trust electronic systems, including CareFlow and the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), ensuring compliance with data protection legislation and Trust policies.
• Register, input, retrieve, and update patient information on hospital information systems as required to support service delivery.
• Exercise judgement and discretion when responding to patient and carer enquiries, providing reassurance and support where appropriate and escalating complex clinical queries to the relevant Speech and Language Therapist.
• Support Speech and Language Therapy staff with administrative, IT, and software-related queries, liaising with Trust support services where necessary.
• Produce, prepare, and maintain therapy resources, information packs, patient materials, reports, and presentations as requested by clinical staff.
• Process departmental orders and course bookings using Trust procurement systems, including SAP Ariba.

Person specification

Education And Qualifications

Essential criteria

• IT literate with experience of inputting data or using a patient administration system
• Educated to GCSE or equivalent
• Competent keyboard skills essentially accuracy and speed

Knowledge, Skills And Abilities

Essential criteria

• An understanding of the meaning of confidentiality and the requirement for this to be maintained
• Clear and effective communication skills, both written and oral
• Ability to demonstrate good customer service skills both face to face and over the telephone.
• Able to prioritise day to day duties and tasks in a calm, organised and flexible approach to meet the needs of the service.
• Able to work with regular interruptions and multiple service users.
• Able to work independently as well as part of a wider team.

Desirable criteria

• Understand NHS outpatient booking processes and/or a fundamental understanding of the NHS.
• Ability to communicate with patients with speech or language or severe hearing difficulties

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of working as part of a team in a multi-disciplinary environment.
• Experienced of general office administration and clerical duties within or outside of the NHS or similar organisation.

Personal qualities

Essential criteria

• Excellent timekeeping and attendance record.
• Work with confidence and sympathy when dealing with patients, carers and visitors.

We hope that you will decide to join us and become part of this exciting journey, helping us to shape our future together.

As an equal opportunities employer actively working towards a diverse workforce we aim to recruit and retain a workforce which represents the rich diversity of the local population at all levels and are committed to designing our services around the needs of individual patients and those around them. Anonymous information will be used from your application to ensure we’re meeting our pledge.

The Trust is committed to investing in and caring for all our staff. We will support you in maintaining and improving your health and wellbeing, as well as your career development through management and training support - developing exceptional people for exceptional careers.

BFT is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults.

To comply with Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 all applicants must be able to speak fluent English to an appropriate standard which will be assessed at Interview.

If you require sponsorship for a visa to work in the UK, to avoid disappointment, please check to ensure you are eligible under the UKVI points based system.

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

By applying for this post, you are agreeing to Bristol NHS Foundation Trust transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. If you are offered a job, information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

Please be aware of scams – unless specified above, we will only communicate with you via @recruit.trac.jobs or nhs.net e-mails and we will never ask you for any payments.

Important

Please note that if you apply for a position with this Trust, you may be contacted via Trac or via email. This includes invites for job interviews. We therefore recommend that you regularly check your Trac account and email accounts. We may also contact you by texting the mobile number, if provided, on the application form.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts we may close this vacancy before the advertised closing date. Therefore, please apply for this post as soon as you can, if you are interested and you meet the requirements of the Person Specification

Only those candidates who clearly demonstrate how they meet the person specification will be shortlisted for this job.

As a guide interviews should usually take place within 3 weeks of the closing date.

When providing employment reference details, please provide correct work-related email addresses so references can be sought promptly when we are looking to progress your application. Your referee must all be known to you in a line manager or professional lead capacity.