Unit Clerk Job Description: Template, Duties, Requirements & Pay (2026)

A unit clerk — also called a unit secretary, ward clerk or health unit coordinator — runs the front desk of a hospital nursing unit: phones, visitors, admissions and discharges paperwork, charts, orders and the constant coordination that keeps nurses at the bedside. Below is a copy-ready unit clerk job description template, how to handle the unit secretary title, the requirements worth keeping, and what federal data says the role pays inside hospitals.

What a unit clerk does

A unit clerk is the hub of a nursing unit's communication. On a typical shift that means answering the unit's phones and routing calls to the right nurse, greeting patients, families and visitors, preparing charts and paperwork for admissions, transfers and discharges, keeping the unit census and bed board current, scheduling tests and requesting transport, routing lab results and messages, ordering and restocking unit supplies, and keeping everything confidential while doing it.

O*NET lists "Unit Clerk" and "Ward Clerk" as reported job titles for medical secretaries and administrative assistants (SOC 43-6013). Its task list for that occupation reads like the unit desk: answer telephones and direct calls to appropriate staff, greet visitors and direct them, schedule and confirm diagnostic appointments, receive and route messages or documents such as laboratory results, maintain medical records, and order and maintain supplies. The BLS says medical secretaries need familiarity with "medical terminology and codes, medical records, and hospital or laboratory procedures," and that they "may train for several months" to learn industry terminology and practices.

That training time is the honest center of the job description. A unit clerk is not a receptionist with a hospital badge. They need to learn the unit's workflow, the electronic health record's clerical side and a vocabulary of abbreviations, and the posting should say that you teach it.

Unit clerk job description template

Copy this into your ATS or careers page, replace the bracketed fields and cut what does not apply. Shift and unit go first because hospital candidates choose on both.

Requirements: what to keep, what to soften, and what to drop

Requirement	What to know
High school diploma	Keep it. The BLS lists a high school diploma or equivalent as the typical entry-level education for secretaries and administrative assistants, and hospitals commonly require it.
Medical terminology	Soften it to preferred, and say you teach it. The BLS notes medical secretaries may train for several months on terminology and practices. Requiring it up front removes strong candidates from retail, hospitality and office work.
Certification (CHUC)	Make it preferred. The Certified Health Unit Coordinator credential is awarded by the NAHUC Certification Board, and as of January 1, 2026 the recertification cycle is two years. It is a useful signal, but few applicants will hold it.
Prior hospital experience	Accept adjacent experience: medical office, clinic front desk, pharmacy counter, CNA or patient care technician. Each has learned part of the job.
Shift and weekend requirements	Keep them and be exact. Twelve-hour shifts, weekend rotation and holidays are the job; candidates who discover them at the offer stage decline.
Résumé upload	Remove it from the first step. Name, phone, shift preference and whether they have healthcare or office experience are enough to call; the full hospital application can come after a screening call.

Unit secretary job description: the same role under another name

Unit clerk, unit secretary, ward clerk and health unit coordinator are the same hospital job. NAHUC, the National Association of Health Unit Coordinators, describes its field as including "health unit coordinators, unit secretaries, unit clerks" and similar frontline roles, and O*NET lists unit clerk and ward clerk as reported titles for the same federal occupation. Which title a hospital uses is mostly habit, and candidates search the one their last hospital used.

The practical answer is to put two titles in the job title field — "Unit Clerk / Unit Secretary" — and use the other names once in the summary. If your organization's official title is health unit coordinator, keep it and add "(unit clerk / unit secretary)" after it. There is no separate duty set to write: the template above works for every version of the title. What does differ by hospital is scope, especially whether the role handles provider orders or only schedules and tracks them, so describe that in the responsibilities rather than signaling it through the title.

How to customize it for your setting

Medical-surgical units

High admissions and discharges volume is the job. Say the bed count and typical daily turnover, and whether the role also covers a sister unit at night.

ICU, step-down and telemetry

Fewer beds, more calls, more family communication and more coordination with other departments. Say whether the clerk also monitors a visitor policy or a locked entrance, and whether there is a monitor technician role alongside or combined with it.

Emergency department

The role often overlaps with registration or patient tracking. Name exactly which systems they will use and whether they register patients, because that is a different skill set and a different candidate.

Nights and weekends

On nights the clerk is often the only non-clinical person on the unit. Say so, state the differential, and say what support is available. Night unit clerk roles can fit around a nursing or allied health program, so if you offer tuition assistance, lead with it.

What unit clerks earn

For medical secretaries and administrative assistants, the BLS May 2025 national median was $22.08 an hour, or $45,930 a year, across 961,610 workers. In hospitals, where unit clerks work, the median for 236,300 workers was $22.68 an hour, or $47,180 a year. The BLS projects medical secretaries to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, adding 47,100 jobs, "primarily due to the growth of the healthcare industry," while secretaries and administrative assistants as a whole are projected to decline 2%. Pay your unit clerks against the hospital figure and your local market, not a general office benchmark.

If you are hiring rather than describing the job, the recruiting side for hospital and health system roles is on our healthcare recruiting page, and ready-to-run ad copy for clinical and support roles is in our healthcare job ad templates.

Writing the ad version

The template is for your ATS and careers page. The ad on Facebook or Instagram has two lines to say unit, shift, pay and the training promise. For example: "Unit Clerk — Med-Surg, 3 x 12s, $20.50/hr + night differential. No hospital experience? We train you on the system. Tuition help for nursing school. Apply in 60 seconds."

Keep the form to name, phone, shift preference and one experience question. Our candidate conversion rate guide explains why every extra field costs applicants, and our help wanted ad examples library has worked examples.

Hiring for a clinic or physician office rather than an inpatient unit? The receptionist job description covers front-desk roles, and the medical assistant job description covers the clinical-plus-clerical version.

Pay and employment for medical secretaries and administrative assistants (SOC 43-6013), nationally and in hospitals (NAICS 622): U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, via the BLS public data API. Entry education, training, knowledge and projections: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Secretaries and Administrative Assistants (last modified August 27, 2026). Tasks and reported job titles: O*NET OnLine 43-6013.00. Role scope and certification: National Association of Health Unit Coordinators and its certification page. All read at source on September 28, 2026. Cost per applicant: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, report-wide median (the benchmark does not segment hospital clerical roles), advertising costs only. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Updated September 2026.