I’m a people person and liked the idea of working in a team environment
Growing up I considered being a teacher or a journalist. I had an interest in books which led me to study English Literature at York St. John University as an undergrad. Whilst completing my masters at Newcastle, I started working part time in warehouse but I soon realised that this job wasn’t for me, partly due to the 4am starts! I applied for a temporary position at Connect Health in the Patient Care Coordination (PCC) team in July 2021 where the hours were much more sociable. I worked 4pm-8pm shifts during the week and on a Saturday. I really enjoyed working in PCC and I soon began to pick up longer shifts of 12pm-8pm and requested that I stay on permanently.
I enjoy speaking to patients and delivering outcomes
Learning new things about healthcare processes, data administration and booking appointments. Talking to patients, you realised that some of them were more complex than others and had different needs. Some of them call up quite upset but you just have to put the time into the call and find a solution for them.
Seeing other parts of the business, the implementation of healthcare, has really sparked my interest in having a career in healthcare
By the end of my masters, I had to start thinking about my long-term career prospects and a full-time opportunity came up as a Quality Support Advisor (QSA) at Connect Health. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to move up in the business. I applied for this role and started in the QSA team, supporting patient care coordinators in August 2022.
I’m really enjoying the role of Quality Support Advisor. I run coaching sessions with the PCC team, help to fix any incidents and I also have the opportunity to work with the development teams on the patient portal.
I get a kick out of working hard and seeing things improve. For me it’s all about about seeing things from the patient perspective and when they have a really good experience, that drives me.
There is a real sense of team and community within PCC
I really like working with the team everyday and the support you get from your colleagues within PCC. I feel like I can go up to anyone and ask for a hand.
When working in the PCC role, it was sometimes difficult to have conversations with patients around waiting times for appointments but those are important conversations to have, it’s important to be transparent. When I moved into the QSA role, I had to the transition from colleague and friend to coach and even though I’ve never done any coaching before it was something I picked up fairly quickly.
I’d never had the opportunity to travel for work before
It’s a really good structure at Connect Health, I started working here in July 2021 as a temp and just a year later I had moved up in the business. There are loads of opportunities to improve if you want to and the team leaders encourage you to learn and try new things.
I had the opportunity to go to Oxfordshire to support some of the clinical staff with the mobilisation of a new service. I met some of the clinicians in person, rather than over Teams I got to understand how clinics worked, better understand the patient experience, and even speak to some of the patients.
Connect Health is people driven, patient oriented and focused on improvement. Trying to nurture people and improve them all the time is something I really like.
If you’d told me years ago that I would be working with patients, I wouldn’t have believed it
I really enjoyed working in the PCC team and talking to patients all day, so when I asked to continue on in a permanent position at the end of my temporary role and discovered that the loyalty and respect was mutual, was fantastic.
My advice to someone looking to apply for healthcare support roles like PCC is to be open minded about it and things will work out. There are so many opportunities to learn and move into other teams within the business if you want to. I would just like to keep moving up.
If you’d like to find out more about working at Connect Health, contact people@connecthealth.co.uk
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