Patient Advice and Liaison / Bereavement Officer

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Patient Advice & Liaison Service

Provide a personal, visible and accessible Patient Advice and Liaison Service and play an active part in making contact with the Trust as easy as possible, signposting patients, service users, relatives and/or carers.

To have frontline direct contact with patients, either by telephone, email, correspondence or face to face.

To support individual patients, carers and family members in order to resolve problems and concerns, offering a number of options and sources of information where possible, including other local and national support networks as necessary.

To liaise with health, voluntary and statutory services on behalf of clients to help resolve problems and concerns.

To listen to patients’ concerns, suggestions and experiences and raising these with the people who manage services.

To help patients understand the NHS complaints procedure and how to make a complaint.

To work within agreed protocols regarding confidentiality, consent and equal opportunities.

Assist with ensuring patients have access to the Trust’s interpreting service in accordance with the Interpreting and Translation Guidelines.

Participate in Safeguarding of Adults by ensuring the PALS Office continues to be a designated safe place.

Bereavement Service

To be responsible for ensuring that clear and accurate records are kept relating to each death within the hospital and to oversee the completion of all paperwork relating to these deaths.

To be responsible for ensuring that relatives are given all relevant paperwork and are provided with information regarding formal requirements.

To supervise the prompt and correct completion of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death in line with statutory legislation.

To supervise the prompt and correct completion of cremation papers in line with statutory legislation.

To maintain the Trust’s bereavement database.

To act as a point of contact between medical staff and relatives, to liaise with the Chaplaincy, Risk Management Department, Medical Records Department, HM Coroner’s Office and Registrars of Births and Deaths.

To liaise with Funeral Directors and Coroner’s Officers as required, to ensure procedures and arrangements towards the issue of death certificates are expedited.

Accompany bereaved relatives to viewings in the mortuary viewing room.

Patient Property

To be responsible for the collection of or the acceptance and safe keeping or safe disposal of property such as clothing, money and/or valuables to comply with the Trust Policy.

Awareness of health and safety issues if property is contaminated (e.g.: blood, faeces, urine, vomit, lice) or contains sharps and ensuring that protective clothing (gloves and aprons) is worn. 

To have responsibility for the correct return to the patient or the next of kin or disposal of patient’s property in line with Trust Policy.

To investigate the whereabouts of deceased patient’s property when there is a discrepancy between ward documentation and relatives’ recollections of patients’ property. 

Record information relating to lost property reported to the PALS Office on database.

Equality and Diversity

Act in a way that supports equality and value diversity.

Encourage a culture that promotes equality and values diversity.

Participate in Equality and Diversity Impact Assessments as appropriate.

General Administration

To produce correspondence to a high standard, using a range of MS Office software products.

To source and collate health related information and health information access points, ensuring the PALS / Bereavement service holds up to date information, which can be made accessible to clients.

To maintain accurate records of PALS / Bereavement contacts, using the Datix system, and departmental databases.

To provide activity reports by collating statistics held on the Datix system, or departmental databases.

To develop and maintain effective and efficient office systems, including brought forward tasks.

To arrange and attend meetings between clients and staff, taking notes where necessary and clarifying outcomes.

Locate, obtain and track medical records using Lorenzo.

To liaise with colleagues elsewhere in the NHS, from social services and from the independent and voluntary sectors as well as practitioners and patients’ representative.

Networking and liaison

To build and maintain good working relationships with clinical and non-clinical staff and to work co-operatively with staff from other agencies.

To have effective, respectful and sensitive communications skills.