Clinical support staff work alongside colleagues in other teams to deliver high quality patient care.
Clinical support staff encompass a wide range of positions, including healthcare assistants, phlebotomists, medical secretaries, and ward clerks, among others. These roles are united by their focus on supporting clinical professionals and directly enhancing the patient experience.
The responsibilities of those working in clinical support roles can be diverse and could include:
- Providing personal care – Assisting patients with daily tasks like washing, dressing, and feeding, ensuring their dignity and comfort.
- Monitoring vital signs – Taking temperatures, blood pressure, and pulse, providing vital information to nurses and doctors.
- Preparing and cleaning equipment – Maintaining a clean and safe environment for patients and staff.
- Managing administrative tasks – Scheduling appointments, filing patient records, and answering phones, ensuring smooth operations.
- Offering emotional support – Providing a listening ear and a reassuring presence to patients and their families.
To be employed in any clinical support role you will need to demonstrate a good standard of literacy and numeracy and for some roles, employers will ask for GCSE’s or equivalent in maths and English. Digital skills and qualifications are also highly sought after as many NHS and Social Care settings rely on IT based systems to manage their databases and patient information. You would also need to demonstrate positive time management, communication and organisational skills for any administrative role.
Working for the NHS or for Social Care in Mid and South Essex provides many opportunities to develop your skills further and there are a wide range of apprenticeship, in-house training and continuing professional development opportunities available that you can use to build your career.
There are also opportunities to develop your career in a clinical support role by taking on additional responsibility and you could become a team leader, supervisor or move into management. There are also development opportunities to move to roles in the wider healthcare teams and you could support nursing teams, midwifery teams or allied health professional teams if you choose to.
Some clinical support roles have lots of face to face contact with patients, whereas others are based away from patient areas and will be focused on the day to day operations of a healthcare setting having little or no contact with patients.
If you are applying to work in a role where you will be speaking to service users on a regular basis, it is important that you have positive communication and customer service skills as well and some employers will ask for evidence of this on your application.