What Do Healthcare Professionals Do?

Your healthcare job descriptions detail the healthcare functions and how they fit in your organisational culture. Depending on the company type and size, the health services department and its medical staff oversee:

• Medical assessments and diagnostic tests (Allied Health Professionals)
• Treatment options for health conditions
• Implementing a patient’s treatment plan
• Communicating with family members
• Providing ongoing care and resources
• Administrative tasks
• Helping patients by administering medication
• Running wards and managing nurse practitioners
• Conducting medical procedures
• Operating medical equipment in a healthcare setting
• Fundraising
• Providing young people, patient, and family education

Healthcare Role

The duties of the hospital or clinic are completed by staff in roles titled as:

• Allied Health Professionals (Dieticians, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Paramedics)
• Doctors
• Nurse Practitioners
• Hospital Porters
• Consultants
• Healthcare Assistant
• Healthcare Support Workers

Healthcare Responsibilities And Duties

A healthcare worker’s duties are the must-do and high-priority responsibilities of the role. These are the job aspects that you will likely govern the individual’s performance on, and as you can imagine, these vary significantly depending on the seniority of the position and whether its focus is physical or mental well-being or support and personal care.

Healthcare responsibilities and duties include:

• Scheduling appointments
• Preparing correspondence and documentation
• Attending team meetings
• Ordering supplies
• Collaborating with other professionals / other employees
• Liaising with laboratories
• Discussing treatment options
• Accompanying patients to agency and healthcare appointments
• Encouraging individuals to follow a healthy diet
• Performing medical tests
• Monitoring patients condition and checking vital signs, such as blood pressure
• Conducting operations and medical procedures
• Providing health education to patients and family members/health promotion
• Administering medication
• Providing emotional support
• Assisting patients with personal care tasks
• Visiting the patient’s home to feed patients and provide nursing care
• Fundraising

These duties are pretty generic, but you can make the job’s duties more engaging and meaningful by saying how the responsibility should be accomplished. For example, ‘Assisting patients in their home by helping them with personal hygiene, household chores, serving meals, and health checks.’

Healthcare Skills

To ensure your healthcare establishment provides adequate and appropriate patient care, you need to hire allied healthcare professionals, doctors, and other health professionals with the required skills.

To complete such an important role and daily activities, medical staff need the right skills, such as:

• Good communication skills/active listening – for patient and coworker interactions
• Time management and flexibility
• Empathy and patience
• Detail-oriented/attention to detail – medical record management and data entry
• General business administration
• Microsoft Office
• Positivity and receptiveness
• Stress management/ability to remain calm
• Knowledge of pharmaceuticals
• Compassion
• Interpersonal abilities
• Decision making
• Time management
• Team-working and collaboration
• Problem-solving skills
• Objectivity
• Organisation
• Committed
• Adaptable
• Multitasking
• Proactive questioning
• Basic nursing skills
• Motivational leadership (managers and executives)
• Willingness to work different shift patterns

Healthcare Qualifications And Education

The education and qualifications depend on the role and level of seniority, but might include:

• NVQ or BTEC healthcare qualification
• Registered Nurse
• Nursing and Midwifery Council registered
• Midwifery Degree
• Health and Care Professions Council registered
• A General Medical Council-recognised degree
• Social Worker Licence
• Dental Nursing qualification
• PhD in Psychology

Required Healthcare Experience And Healthcare Training

Healthcare professionals may complete a Nursing Degree Apprenticeship and gain practical experience before working independently.

Healthcare Job Description FAQs

Here we answer your questions on healthcare roles, job titles, and job descriptions.

WHAT ARE THE HEALTHCARE ROLES?

There are many roles and job titles including healthcare assistant, healthcare support workers, social workers, care workers, doctors, and nurses.

WHAT ARE THE HEALTHCARE ASSISTANT SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS?

To complete healthcare assistant duties, workers need empathy, patience, communication, team-working, good listening skills, flexibility, and attention to detail. Healthcare assistant qualifications include T Level in Health, Level 2 Diploma in Health and Social Care, Level 2 Diploma in Preparing for Further Study in Health, Social Care, & Social Work, and Level 3 National Extended Diploma in Health and Social Care. A healthcare assistant might display their career commitment by engaging in paid or voluntary work.

WHAT ARE THE QUALIFICATIONS OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS?

A doctor or GP will need to complete a 5-year degree recognised by the General Medical Council, followed by five to eight years of specialty training. A nurse will need an adult nursing degree recognised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

HOW DO I HIRE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS?

Job advertising for Healthcare will vary depending on the position and healthcare skills you need. You will need to implement a recruitment strategy that encompasses advertising on general and specialist healthcare job boards, social media, and word-of-mouth referrals. Your nurse, doctor, and hospital support hiring strategy might also include having a presence at medical conferences and on the website of health organisations.

Important elements that will affect recruitment success include writing an effective job description, selecting the proper job title, and defining qualifications.

Flat fee recruitment solutions continue to deliver the best results when hiring occupational therapists, doctors, specialists, and other healthcare professionals with diverse backgrounds.

WHAT IS A HEALTHCARE JOB DESCRIPTION?

A healthcare job description is a document that sets out the role’s duties, tasks, and key skills. Putting these in black and white is vital and will help you find the ideal healthcare professionals for a position that directly affects patient care, other healthcare professionals, and the performance and success of your business or organisation.

Effective healthcare job descriptions should be transparent and clearly set out who you are, who you want, what they will do, and why medical staff or a healthcare assistant might want to work for you. It helps tremendously to use language and jargon that connects with and engages your audience.

When you get all of this right and include the best words to use when writing healthcare job descriptions, you will get job applications from qualified candidates that closely match your ideal person specification.

HOW DO I WRITE HEALTHCARE JOB DESCRIPTIONS?

When writing a job description either for advertising a job or an internal job specification you need to focus on 5 main criteria:

1. What are the key jobs, tasks, and duties required for a healthcare position
2. Consider all the job responsibilities required for a healthcare role
3. What skills the person must have for the job
4. What personality traits the person must have to work in healthcare
5. Appropriate and relevant education and qualifications

These five criteria should help you build a picture of your ideal candidate. Good questions to consider that will help you write a concise company job description that stands apart from others (essential in the current competitive job market), and attracts candidates of a high calibre, include:

• What value does this role bring to your business?
• How does the role align with your company culture, values, and mission?
• How does this role differ from other positions?
• How is this role similar to other positions?
• What are the minimum medical skills or transferable skills?
• What are examples of your standards, risks, goals, and targets?

Suppose you are not hands-on in the health centre or highly familiar with the company’s medical services or products. In that case, it can help to interview one of your healthcare support workers, nursing associates, or medical staff to gain a greater understanding of the role.

A word about jargon: The phrase ‘jargon’ has good and bad connotations, and if it isn’t carefully considered, it may deter candidates from applying. Ask yourself if words and phrases are company exclusive or recognisable by individuals in the industry or by professionals who may have valuable transferable skills refined in alternative business sectors.

Furthermore, if you are hiring for senior-level or management positions, you might expect candidates to have a greater vocabulary and understanding of medical jargon and healthcare regulations. However, if you are hiring for a junior-level position, consider being as straightforward and transparent as possible.

WHAT HEALTHCARE TASKS SHOULD I INCLUDE IN A JOB DESCRIPTION?

The tasks of a healthcare assistant or healthcare support worker are any other activities that they complete occasionally or on a daily basis. These are usually subsidiary tasks such as administrative tasks, using medical equipment, or updating patient records.

It is tempting to leave some of the more ‘mundane’ tasks out to make your jobs sound more attractive, but this can lead to trouble down the road as you may recruit a healthcare professional that is not a perfect match. If you hire the wrong candidate for your business, the healthcare team, patients, families, and your organisation may suffer. The employee might leave your company, and you are back to square one, requiring another investment in recruitment and training.

If you get to the end of the process outlined here and find that your healthcare job descriptions are too long and concise has gone out the window, it is time to review your first draft. To bring things back into line, you should delete unnecessary phrases and fluff, remove prepositional phrases, focus on what is role critical, and refrain from putting your entire ‘about us’ page in your content.

HOW DO I ENGAGE HEALTHCARE CANDIDATES?

As a final note for employers and recruiters, it is crucial to remember that while a job description is about what and who you want, describing this alone will not create an inbox full of eager candidates willing to comply. A care worker, nursing team, or healthcare assistant job description and job advert must go beyond the duties, skills, education, qualifications, traits, and tasks that you want and communicate the position’s value to job seekers.

Your business or organisation should convey its employee value propositions to engage candidates, highlighting both monetary and other benefits. Benefits that will entice qualified job seekers to apply might include:

• Stating the average salary range or pay system
• Focusing on work-life balance
• Flexible working – is the role remote/work from home or are hours and shifts flexible?
• Opportunities to gain additional qualifications
• Career development opportunities
• The quality of facilities, equipment, or services
• How the organisation’s values align with those of patients, the public, and employees