Healthcare Assistant | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust; Bristol; On-site; GBP 19,000 - 24,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent healthcare organization in Bristol is seeking a dedicated healthcare assistant to join their team. You will engage with patients, deliver essential health services, and ensure optimal care while working with diverse populations in secure environments. The ideal candidate has strong communication skills and a commitment to patient welfare. This role requires national security vetting and offers an opportunity to contribute positively to patient lives.

Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare or patient support preferred.
• Ability to communicate effectively with patients.
• Willingness to undertake National Security Vetting.

Responsibilities

• Respond to patients' needs honestly and openly.
• Assist in delivering health promotion activities.
• Work under the direction of registered healthcare professionals.
• Carry out assessments and monitoring tasks.

Skills

Patient Care

Communication

Holistic Care

Emergency Response

Job description

Overview

Are you ready to unlock your potential within a challenging, creative and fast paced work environment? Do you want to work with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past?

This is an excellent opportunity for a healthcare assistant to join our team of diverse, talented healthcare professionals to deliver care that is not only efficient but deeply centred on the patient. Our healthcare team has a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patient’s future resettlement back into the community. We directly deliver Mental Health, Physical Health, Pharmacy and Clinical Substance Misuse in an integrated healthcare delivery model to provide effective and responsive care to improve wellbeing and support better outcomes in the future.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes. We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our values: We’re Kind, We’re Fair, We Listen, We Care.

Key Tasks and Responsibilities

• Responding to the needs of patients in an honest, non-judgemental, and open manner, which respects the rights of individuals and groups.
• Actively engaging with patients in the provision of holistic, needs-led care which considers the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of individuals and groups.
• Delivery of health promotion activities and programmes (including patient self-help programmes) in support of a registered healthcare professional.
• Assisting patients to attain optimal physical health and assisting with physical procedures in alongside a registered healthcare professional.
• Contributing appropriately to risk assessment and individualised care planning.

Clinical Responsibilities

To work as directed by a registered nurse, providing physical care to patients according to a written care plan. Typical duties include:

• Carrying out ECGs
• Phlebotomy
• Basic wound care
• NEWS2 and patient assessment
• Blood glucose monitoring
• Taking patients’ weight and other measurements

Other responsibilities includes:

• Assisting in emergency call outs and instigating emergency procedures when appropriate
• Being second checker on medication rounds
• Ordering and maintaining stock
• Ensuring treatment rooms are clean, tidy and well stocked
• Appropriate escalation to registered healthcare professionals
• Using appropriate templates in SystmOne to document contemporaneously and accurately
• Maintaining patient confidentiality and security
• Adhering to all organisational and prison policies, procedures, and guidelines
• Ensuring good working relationships with patients, carers, relatives, other professionals and prison and healthcare staff
• Developing an understanding of and demonstrating use of clinical supervision to reflect upon and modify practice

Custodial Responsibilities

• Assume personal responsibility for the security of issued keys.
• Understand and comply with prison orders, procedures, and instructions in your area of work.
• Comply with all security requirements.
• Respond to any situation or circumstance that might indicate a threat to security of the establishment or to the safety of an individual, completing Incident, Security, Injury, or other reports as appropriate.
• Report breaches of order and discipline including reporting and recording untoward incidents according to local protocol.
• Contribute to effective risk assessment and management procedures.

Communication

• Routinely communicate effectively with patients and work to overcome barriers to understanding (e.g., patients with physical or mental health conditions or learning disabilities).
• Develop and maintain inter-disciplinary and inter-agency working with all relevant agencies and organisations as directed.
• Develop and maintain close working partnerships with HMPS, Prison Governors and Heads of Prison Services, Forensic Services, Probation Services, Crown Prosecution Service, Police, and all other non-statutory agencies that are integral to prisoner/patient care and offender management.
• Undertake other duties agreed in conjunction with registered staff, Integrated Primary Healthcare Services.

Important Information

Sponsorship is not available for this post.

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

• Proof of right to work documentation
• Proof of ID, including 1 photographic ID
• Proof of address documentation
• Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home Office Share code
• Address history: 5 years
• Police certificate requirements for non-UK passport holders or for UK passport holders who have lived abroad

This advert closes on Monday 29 Sep 2025