An exciting opportunity has arisen for Laboratory Medicine at Weston General. This is a post for a permanent Medical Laboratory Assistant at the Weston General Hospital Pathology site within Bristol NHS Foundation Trust.

The post holder will be part of a team providing a diagnostic Blood Sciences service to the Trust. The team comprises Medical Laboratory Assistants (MLA), Biomedical Scientists, Clerical staff and Medical staff.

The post holder will be an important part of the Laboratory Medicine team, supporting implementation of the new laboratory instrumentation. They will work primarily in the automated laboratory within Haematology, Blood Transfusion and Clinical Biochemistry, assisting with sample workflow.

The post holder will be required to work routine, early, late, weekend and bank holiday shifts in order to support the routine and out of hours service. This will be part of a rota within the working team.

The post holder will contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of patients within the hospital by providing technical and data entry assistance to Departmental staff.

The post holder will perform a number of healthcare science technical activities including maintaining new equipment, supporting verification of instruments, and generally assisting colleagues where necessary.

Supporting the implementation of new automated instrumentation as directed by Biomedical Scientists.

Enabling the smooth workflow of samples between pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical processes. Including use of various automated analysers and automated storage equipment.

Collecting, sorting, prioritising and processing of samples in a busy environment while maintaining good working relationships with colleagues and service users.

Filing of samples following completion of analysis into the appropriate storage systems.

Retrieval of consumables and reagents from the stores, advising the senior BMS when the stock becomes low.

Use of laboratory information management systems.

Use of software packages including word processing, spreadsheets and databases to enter data on a daily basis.

Use of e-mail to send authorised documents within Blood Sciences.

Use of the document management system (Q-Pulse).

To observe all applicable safety regulations and attend any mandatory and statutory training as required.

To undertake such training as necessary to enhance and to improve performance within the Department.

Bristol NHS Foundation Trust brings together more than 28,000 staff to deliver over 160 clinical services across thirteen hospital locations, operating from three main sites at Southmead, Bristol city centre and Weston.

With an annual turnover of £2.3 billion, we are now one of the largest NHS trusts in the United Kingdom. Our hospitals are spread across Bristol and Weston, join us and you can enjoy the very best of both worlds; city living within a stone’s throw of the countryside or beside the seaside, both with easy access to all that the South West has to offer.

Bristol NHS Foundation Trust values all people as individuals. As an equal opportunities employer actively working towards a diverse workforce we aim to recruit and retain a workforce which represents the rich diversity of the local population at all levels and are committed to designing our services around the needs of individual patients and those around them. Anonymous information will be used from your application in order to ensure we’re meeting our pledge.

For a more detailed job description and main responsibilities, please refer to the job description document attached to this vacancy.