Senior Healthcare Science Assistant

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic and suitability qualified Senior Healthcare Science Assistant to join the Flow Cytometry Laboratory. This laboratory performs immunology and haematology assays for Newcastle Hospitals, the wider region through the Northern England Haemato-oncology Diagnostic Service (NEHODS), and acts as a national and international referral laboratory for specialist immunology.

• Interview Date 17/04/2023
• 37 Hours 30 Minutes/Week
• You will be redirected to Trac to apply for the vacancy. Please expand the job details section and read all of the information before applying for the vacancy.

Please note it is a requirement of The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust that all successful candidates who require a DBS for the post they have been offered pay for their DBS certificate. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first month’s pay.

Successful candidates will work alongside a team of another Senior Healthcare Science Assistant, Biomedical Scientists and Healthcare Scientists contributing to the day-to-day work of the section including reception duties, administrative tasks and performing practical laboratory work. You must have good attention to detail and organisation skills as well as being able to prioritise and manage your workload.

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the busiest, largest and most successful teaching NHS foundation trusts in the country, with over 18,000 staff and an annual income of £1 billion.

Rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC for the second consecutive time in 2019, we have a long history of providing high quality care, clinical excellence, and innovation in medical research regionally, nationally and internationally.

We’re also proud to be the second largest provider of specialised services in the country. This means we support people with a range of rare and complex medical, surgical and neurological conditions, cancers and genetic orders.

Our staff oversee around 1.84 million patients ‘contacts’ each year, delivering high standards of healthcare.

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity and recognise the benefit in providing an inclusive environment. We value and respect the diversity of our employees and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects the communities we serve, and is equipped to deliver the best service to our patients. We welcome all applications irrespective of people’s race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, age, gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity and in particular those from under- represented groups.

• A Senior Healthcare Science Assistant (HCSA) is part of a clinical support team whose purpose is to provide timely and accurate high quality scientific information that will assist service users from the hospital and community, in the establishment of a clinical diagnosis and monitoring of patient treatment.
• The Senior HCSA will use extended technical skills to carry out a variety of laboratory duties including reception and data entry of requests received and some routine pathological tests under the direct or indirect supervision and guidance of a Biomedical Scientist.
• To assist in the preparation of specimens for analysis, including the separation of blood, serum and plasma, and the cataloguing and storage of specimens.
• Entering requests into the laboratory computer system.
• To carry out, under direct or indirect supervision, some laboratory diagnostic tests and the operation of laboratory equipment.
• To assist in the department Quality Assurance programmes
• To work in compliance with local health and safety rules to ensure a safe working environment for you, colleagues and visitors. To adhere to department and Trust Health and Safety policies (including COSHH, Risk assessments and Standard Operating Procedures) and to report any non-compliances to a senior member of staff.
• Answering telephone enquiries and retrieving results in accordance with the standard operational procedure.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.