Wider Healthcare Team
Career options: Support services
Support staff provide essential day-to-day services, often working closely alongside the healthcare team. For example, they assist in laboratories, move patients, staff and equipment around the hospital site and look after security. They ensure supplies are available when needed and that surgical instruments are sterilised ready for the operating theatre.
Roles in this area include:
Audiovisual technicians
Audiovisual technicians provide resources for the many teaching areas of the health service and help to stage conferences. You will work with a wide range of technical equipment, including multimedia projectors, PA systems and video conferencing tools.
Drivers
Most trusts now have more than one site and some services such as pathology are centralised. Drivers transport essential items such as pathology samples, blood and drugs between those sites. You might also drive essential staff and take patients to and from hospital. There are opportunities for drivers in some of the national special health authorities dealing with blood and organ delivery and the distribution of health service supplies.
Fire safety officers
As a fire safety officer, you will advise on safe practice, giving regular training sessions to all staff on fire prevention and on emergency procedures. You’ll also be responsible for ensuring that electrical and other systems are safe and that no part of the premises represents a fire hazard.
Messengers
As a messenger in the NHS, you will be an important member of the team, relied upon for speed and efficiency in urgent situations. You will move between the different trust buildings and hospital departments, and also around the local area generally.
Porters
Porters move frail and often very ill people between departments and wards in safety and comfort. In this role you will also transport complicated equipment that needs expert handling.
Security
As a member of the security staff you will ensure that the hospital is safe for patients, visitors and staff. In addition, you will look after valuable equipment, patrol buildings and grounds, monitor CCTV and respond to emergency calls from staff.
Sterile services managers/assistants
Sterile services units have an essential part to play in fighting infection within hospitals. You will be responsible for decontaminating complicated medical equipment and reassembling it for use in areas such as operating theatres.
Storekeepers
The NHS relies on a huge range and quantity of supplies and as a storekeeper you will ensure these supplies are delivered on time to the right wards and departments. You will also stock-take and use computers to keep track of orders. Your job might be based at a regional distribution centre.
