Job Overview
Berkshire and Surrey Pathology Services (BSPS) is a joint venture between Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust, Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust delivering pathology services to both acute and primary care patients across the network area.
Responsibilities
- The role of Pathology Applications Support is to ensure that IT administration tasks associated with the day‑to‑day running of a range of Pathology IT applications are handled effectively and efficiently.
- Handle queries from GPs and trust staff to maintain relationship with users.
- Answer queries via email, self‑service requests and phone in a timely manner, logging all work requests in accordance with current practice, ensuring minimum data sets are met and triaging and resolving on first contact where possible.
- Liaise with third‑party suppliers and contractors to ensure incidents are resolved within agreed SLAs.
- Engage with staff and GPs with varying IT skills for troubleshooting and training.
- Maintain system event log and manage applications to maximise uptime according to SLAs.
- Create and maintain user accounts for Pathology IT applications, ensuring data accuracy.
- Administer new staff and leavers in a timely manner.
- Escalate issues to second line support or external suppliers as appropriate.
- Participate in testing of business continuity and downtime plans, providing evidence on spreadsheets.
- Support project teams with testing for projects and BAU changes.
- Act as first line support to triage incoming calls, prioritising based on number of sites, affected users and clinical impact.
- Communicate progress and updates to users in a timely manner.
- Support out‑of‑hours rota for Pathology IT, travelling to other hospital sites and GP practices as required.
- Maintain data quality by adhering to rigorous processes and identifying issues for improvement.
- Ensure compliance with Trust policies for Data Protection Act and Caldicott Principles.
- Assist with office administration tasks on request.
Person Specification
Qualifications – Essential
- Educated to degree standard or 3 years equivalent experience.
- Business Administration NVQ Level 3.
- Willing to attend Trust courses to improve and broaden knowledge base.
Qualifications – Desirable
- ITIL and specifically application of ITIL Change, Incident and Problem Management principles.
- Training in use of Service Desk Solutions.
- ECDL or equivalent IT qualification.
Experience – Essential
- Experience of working in a busy office environment.
- Experience of setting up and configuring applications including master files, templates, peripherals such as printers and RBAC.
- Experience of servers, interfaces and other IT equipment to support a busy pathology department.
- Experience translating data into simple reports or information for non‑technical staff.
Experience – Desirable
- NHS processes, policies and protocols.
- Knowledge of use and support of pathology systems e.g. WinPath and ICE.
- Experience working in a user support environment.
Special Requirements – Essential
- Able to work across all BSPS sites.
- Able to cover out‑of‑hours as required.
Skills & Knowledge – Essential
- Excellent telephony, verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills.
- Aptitude to query information with customer to gain more details and establish facts.
- Demonstrates the ability to provide a first‑class customer experience.
- Experience as a first line support application officer in clinical applications.
- IT literate – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
