Job Description of Healthcare Workers
The job description of various healthcare workers is discussed here. It will be very helpful for OET aspirants while writing letters.
It is always confusing for the OET candidates to identify what points to be included and not to be included while writing an OET letter. Let’s know to understand the job roles of some commonly asked healthcare workers in the OET exam.
General practitioners and family physicians (GP)
Job Description
General practitioners and family physicians who generally work in private practice, including group or team practices, hospitals and clinics provide primary contact and continuous care for the management of patient’s health. GP diagnose and treat the diseases, physiological disorders and injuries of patients.
Job duties
- GP takes the patient advocacy role and co-ordinate or manages primary patient care
- Provide continuous care to patients and supervise home care services
- Examine patients and take their histories, order laboratory tests, X-rays and other diagnostic procedures and consult with other medical practitioners to evaluate patients’ physical and mental health
- Prescribe and administer medications and treatments
- Provide emergency care
- Provide acute care management
- Vaccinate patients to prevent and treat diseases
- Perform and assist in routine surgery
- Deliver babies and provide prenatal and postnatal care
- Provide counselling and support to patients and their families on a wide range of health and lifestyle issues
- Advise patients and their families on health care including health promotion, disease, illness and accident prevention
- Report births, deaths, and contagious and other diseases to governmental authorities.
Physiotherapists
Job Description
Physiotherapists assess patients to plan and carry out treatment programs to maintain, improve or restore physical functioning and mobility, alleviate pain and prevent physical dysfunction in patients. They are employed in hospitals, clinics, industry, sports organizations, rehabilitation centers and extended care facilities, or they may work in private practice.
Job duties
- Assess patient’s physical abilities through functional ability tests
- Provide advice on exercise and strategies to implement at home to enhance and or maintain treatment
- Establish treatment goals with patients based on physical diagnosis
- Plan and implement programs of physiotherapy including therapeutic exercise, manipulations, massage, education, the use of electro-therapeutic and other mechanical equipment and hydrotherapy
- Evaluate the effectiveness of treatment plans and modify them accordingly
- Communicate with referring physician and other health care professionals regarding patients’ problems, needs and progress
- Develop and implement health promotion programs for patients, staff and the community
- May provide consulting or education services.
- Maintain clinical and statistical records and confer with other health care professionals
Nursing Home Manager
Job Roles
- Manage overall nursing home facility’s healthcare operations.
- Manage administration and financial operations of a nursing home facility.
- Ensure compassionate healthcare services to patients.
- Provide excellent diagnosis and lab services to patients.
- Interact with patients and their families in relation to healthcare aspects.
- Organize and schedule specialized nursing care duties.
- Manage and handle patient care issues and activities.
- Instruct and counsel patients and their families on insurance benefits.
- Provide counsel to patients and their families on financial options available.
- Ensure compliance with all state regulations, policies and laws.
Admission Supervisor
Job Description
The Admissions Representative interviews patients on admission, records information, and secure signatures, and prepares and supplies patient data to appropriate hospital departments.
Job Roles
- Answers daily inquiries regarding admitting procedures, hospital regulations and services; refer inquiries to the appropriate person or department elsewhere in the hospital when necessary.
- Performs pre-admitting activities.
- Performs admitting activities.
- Prepares and distributes various admission forms.
- Greets patients and conducts patient interviews to obtain required information and signatures.
- Notifies the nursing unit of patient arrival and assigns a volunteer if needed.
- Prepares receipts for telephone rental, bill payment, etc. Accepts patient valuables and provides patient information literature.
- Serves as a liaison with insurance companies regarding the admission of their subscribers and logs notifications made.
- Monitors physician’s overdue chart list to ensure that booking restrictions are applied.
- Prepares death certificates for physicians’ signatures.
Registered Nurse
Job Role
- Conduct physical exams to assess patient health needs and problems
- Implement physicians’ orders, perform treatments, start IVs, administer medications, and interpret special tests.
- Order and evaluate diagnostic tests to assess patients’ conditions and needs
- Administer direct care to injured, disabled, ill, or convalescent patients
- Review and maintain medical records
- Implement and develop nursing care plans
- Maintain a safe, hygienic working environment
- Prepare rooms and medical equipment and decontaminate instruments
- Provide emotional and psychological support
- Counsel patients and family members on disease prevention and health maintenance
- Supervise the work of licensed practical nurses, nursing aides, and assistants
- Educate patients about their medical conditions and treatment plans
Community Nurse
Job Description
Working in a variety of environments, from clinics and health centers to residential accommodation and patients’ own homes, community nurses help to meet the needs of elderly, disabled or vulnerable patients who may not be able to easily visit the hospital.
Job Role
- Providing in-home treatment and support services to individuals and families who need them.
- Provide basic care – such as checking temperature, blood pressure and breathing, administering injections
- assisting doctors with examinations and medical procedures
- cleaning and dressing wounds, setting up intravenous drips and monitoring ongoing care
- Educating communities about healthy lifestyles and disease prevention. This includes teaching people how to performing free health screenings for common diseases, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol
- Conducting health assessments to identify risk factors for chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease
- Counselling people who are at increased risk of illness or injury about how to take precautions to prevent illness, including performing screenings that lead to early detection of disease
- Describing how insurance works and helping uninsured or underinsured people gain access to healthcare services
- Participating in community outreach by distributing public health information at schools, churches, workplaces, and other community settings.
Social Worker
Job Description
Social workers work with specific groups of clients, including children, the elderly and families in crisis, and help them to solve the problems they’re facing. Clients may be vulnerable or in difficult situations, so social workers need to be able to work under pressure and understand other people’s viewpoints.
Job Roles
- Visiting clients and assessing their needs
- Arranging appropriate care, resources or benefits
- Liaising with relatives, colleagues and other professionals
- Writing reports
- Attending or contributing to court cases.
Occupational Therapist
Job Description
An occupational therapist (OT) is a practitioner who uses therapeutic techniques to improve, rehabilitate, or maintain a patient’s ability to perform everyday activities.
An occupational therapist’s job is to help people
- be more independent,
- have a better quality of life,
- and live with as few restrictions as possible.
Job Roles
- Evaluating a patient’s condition and needs
- Developing treatment plans to address a patient’s needs and help them meet specific goals
- Assessing a patient’s home and/or work environment and recommending adaptations to fit the patient’s needs and improve independence
- Training patients and their caregivers to use special equipment
- undertaking patient assessments of physical, communication, interaction and cognitive skills
- undertaking general administrative tasks, for example, writing reports, making telephone calls, maintaining records and case notes
- liaising with doctors, family members, carers and other professionals and keeping them updated
- planning further treatment and reviewing progress
- assessing treatment success at multi-professional case conferences/meetings
- advising people on how they can approach everyday tasks different
Music Therapist
Job Description
To be effective in this role you need to multitask by playing music, interacting with clients, making assessments, and taking notes simultaneously.
Job Roles
- Collaborating with an interdisciplinary team to ascertain whether individuals qualify for music therapy.
- Designing musical interventions based on therapeutic goals to improve clients’ psychological, physical, and social health.
- Providing music therapy sessions.
- Inviting clients to interact by encouraging them to sing and dance.
- Monitoring clients during musical interventions and measuring the effectiveness of sessions.
- Recording and videotaping clients on a periodic basis to measure effectiveness and progress.
- Keeping records of client progress.
- Conducting biannual assessments to re-evaluate clients.