Healthcare Assistant

NHS; Torquay; On-site; GBP 18,000 - 22,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading hospice as a Healthcare Assistant in Torquay, where you will provide essential care and support to patients and their families. This role offers a chance to work in a compassionate team, ensuring the best possible experience for those facing life-limiting illnesses. With a focus on personal development and teamwork, you will play a vital role in delivering high-quality care in a supportive environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in a patient or customer-facing role.
• Experience in providing personal care.

Responsibilities

• Provide personal care as per individual care plans.
• Assist in maintaining equipment and cleanliness.
• Communicate effectively with patients and families.

Skills

Customer Service

Teamwork

Education

NVQ level 2 in care

Care certificate

Job description

Are you our next Healthcare Assistant to join our Inpatient Unit?

If you want to feel personal fulfilment from a career with real meaning, consider Rowcroft Hospice.

We offer purposeful work in a uniquely progressive environment. An opportunity has arisen to join our Inpatient Unit as a Healthcare Assistant where you will help to care for and support our patients as part of our multidisciplinary team.

Main duties of the job

What you will bring

To be successful in this role, you will need to have excellent customer service skills, experience in a patient or customer-facing role, and an NVQ level 2 or equivalent in care.

You will be driven by our cause and will enjoy working in a fast-paced environment as part of a close team to deliver on our strategy. It takes real teamwork, energy, and passion; no two days are ever the same!

Our Vision is to make every day the best day possible for patients, and those closest to them, living with life-limiting illnesses in South Devon. You will help to deliver this by being an active member of the multidisciplinary team, supporting our nurses to provide professional physical, social, and emotional care and support to our patients and families on our Inpatient Unit.

About us

What's in it for you?

At Rowcroft, we pride ourselves on supporting staff to develop, and we offer training. You will be supported and encouraged to innovate and try new things. Our scope of work and our confident organizational vision create opportunities for progress and development. We work together with passion and pride in an environment where people are caring, considerate, inclusive, and welcoming. It can be tough. We don't shy away from that, but you'll clearly see the importance and impact of your work and feel recognized and part of something remarkable.

Working at Rowcroft Hospice

Rowcroft Hospice is an independent charity that provides comfort, support, and specialist care to over 2,000 patients and their loved ones across South Devon each year. Our Vision is to make every day the best day possible for patients, and those closest to them, living with life-limiting illnesses in South Devon.

For more information or an informal discussion about the role, please contact Inpatient Unit Manager Michelle Ayling or Deputy Manager Sam Oloko on 01803 210800

Job responsibilities

Key roles and responsibilities:

• Play an active role in providing care to patients and their families. Contribute to the assessment, planning, and monitoring of patients, identify physical and/or psychological changes or concerns, carry out observations and monitoring of patients by taking temperatures, pulses, and respirations, maintain accurate records.
• Provide personal care as set out in individual care plans, including feeding, personal hygiene, and repositioning with safe and effective use of hoists, being mindful of infection prevention and control at all times.
• Liaise with registered nurses and other colleagues. Communicate effectively with patients, relatives, and carers, and participate in interdisciplinary team working to support patients. Work to overcome barriers to communication.
• Provide reassurance, including support to those who are distressed.
• Assist in maintaining equipment to a high standard within the manufacturer's required standards of cleanliness and safety, ensuring that patient areas are kept clean and tidy.
• Act at all times within the limits of your competence.
• Support Registered Nurses with care after death.
• Promote a culture of continuous learning, development, and wellbeing. Identify your own learning and development needs and ensure your mandatory and essential training is up to date. Take part in clinical supervision, play an active part in team meetings. Help to create an environment that is continually critically questioning practice and promoting learning.

Infection Prevention

All Rowcroft employees are required to adhere to the Infection Prevention and Control Policies and make every effort to maintain high standards of infection control at all times to reduce the burden of Healthcare-Associated Infections, including MRSA.

You agree to the following:

• To decontaminate your hands prior to and after direct patient care or contact with the patient's surroundings;
• To take part in mandatory infection control training provided;
• To responsibly manage your own infections.

Place of Work

This role has been identified as an on-site worker, working at a Rowcroft site for the majority of their working time. This will be fully discussed and agreed with the postholder to meet individual and business needs.

Person Specification

Knowledge and Skills

• Excellent customer service towards all internal and external customers.

Qualifications

• NVQ level 2 or equivalent in care.
• Care certificate.

Personal Requirements

• Friendly, welcoming, and inclusive.
• Leadership through creative problem solving, a positive can-do attitude, and a willingness and desire to ensure all who come into contact with Rowcroft have the best possible experience.
• A desire to be part of a committed and hardworking team in line with the ethics and values of Rowcroft Hospice, acting in the best interests of Rowcroft at all times.
• A commitment to continually learn and develop.
• A good understanding of the purpose, values, and strategy of Rowcroft Hospice.
• Willing and able to volunteer for at least one Rowcroft event each year.

Experience

• Experience in a patient or customer-facing role.
• Experience in providing personal care.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975, and as such, it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.