Caroline Clacy

I have always been caring, committed and hard working, striving to do the best I can at all times. The past ten years I have spent nursing have been the most fulfilling and rewarding years of my career.

I started my career in Critical Care, aiming to learn as much as possible within a short timescale - I quickly learned to prioritise and react to achieve the best possible outcomes in often intense circumstances, keeping focussed under pressure.

I then moved into palliative care as this is where my passion has always been. Maybe it is my drive to get things right when it really matters, and personalised, empathetic care, but I found this time extremely rewarding. I went on to become ward team leader, managing a team of nurses and HCAs within the ward environment. My communication and listening skills became more ever more important, but my attention to detail and empathy made the more senior role incredibly fulfilling.

Moving forward from here I chose to work in the community setting for a year to gain valuable knowledge and experience within the MDT and community settings, gaining me the experience I would need to further my palliative care role into a specialised job within the community. Working autonomously and planning, but also reacting to ever changing conditions and families was rewarding, although the widespread area I covered was not without its challenges.

These led me to my current role - Practice Nursing. The diversity of each day is unpredictable, fast paced and challenging, but a privilege. I see people from birth through to end of life, liaising with the acute sector daily, as well as all community teams, going through records to plan care when the patient is unable to. I work alone but very much part of a team, supporting each other and ensuring I work safely within my competence.

Throughout all of my roles, communication and documentation has been crucial. I can see when it works, and where things have the potential to go wrong. I now feel I am ready for a change, and a step away from patient facing care.

I feel my experience, attention to detail and ability to work fast effectively under pressure are all positives for the role of medical records paginator. I am the immunisation lead and most days find myself trawling through historic records to bring patients records up to date, to ensure care delivered is appropriate and safe.

I have experienced record keeping in may forms, acute, community, private and GP, all unique systems and styles of documentation. My days are always busy and change by the hour to meet the needs of the surgery, ensuring high standards of care are given and documented, while meeting various deadlines throughout each day. I am used to working on my own and managing my time in a pressured environment. Because of this, a good work life balance is so important to me, and I use walking and running, socialising, travelling and spending time with my large family are also important to me. I relish setting myself goals outside of work as well as in! Last years goal was to run a marathon, raising a great amount for a local Cancer Charity, the year before was a triathlon - this year is a work in progress!

I really hope that I could be considered for a role within your team and I feel I would bring hard work but also positivity, teamwork and enthusiasm to QMG Services.