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To mark Administrative Professionals Day 2022, ward clerk Susan Jobson shares more about the role

Hello, my name is Susan Jobson, and I have been a ward clerk for some 18 years now. I came into the role after being made redundant from a previous job and I haven’t looked back since. When I first started back in 2003, I joined the gastroenterology ward and stayed there for some time. It was in 2015 when the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Hospital opened that I moved into the respiratory ward. There’s always something to do and that is something I love, it keeps my brain ticking.

Day to day, I’ll look after patient notes ensuring patient privacy at all times, answer the telephones with all of the different call types coming into the ward, keeping the admin spaces tidy and any other administrative jobs that the ward may need to have done. While there are the core tasks that repeat, there is a big variety in what I do. It can be very fast moving and you have to be able to adapt and be ready for anything. There can be challenges every day on the ward, but you just work together as a team and it all comes together eventually.

That’s a large part of why I love my job: the team. I work with a great bunch of people who work very hard. We’re clinical and clerical staff working as one, helping patients and their families. There is such a variety in what it means to be admin support to all of these different departments and specialties. I’ve been here for as long as I have because of that variety and opportunity to have different ways of working.

While we don’t do the work to be constantly praised, it is nice to see nods to our efforts through appreciation days like today.