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The healthcare assistant role
Introduction
Welcome to Introducing practical healthcare, where you start exploring the role of a healthcare assistant. Once completed, you will have the opportunity to obtain the ʿhealthcare assistant roleʾ badge. This section will take approximately 2 hours to complete.
In this section you will be focusing on the principles of care practice, and what might be involved in the role of a healthcare assistant, by considering your job responsibilities and why caring is so important. This section will also consider the importance of looking after yourself within the role. More importantly, you will think about your personal learning within the healthcare domain, and how recording your training and development can help you become more reflective in your work. Learning from your own experiences will help you to do things better every time. There are a number of activities to help you along the way, where you reflect on what you have been learning within this section and how you can apply these new skills and knowledge in practice. You will also consider a couple of real-life case studies of healthcare assistants who demonstrate their common daily activities.
Learning outcomes
By completing this section and the associated quiz, you will be able to:
describe the tasks and responsibilities of the healthcare assistant role
explain the importance of keeping yourself healthy and avoiding stress
understand the need for training and personal development.
1 Healthcare assistant skills and tasks
Healthcare assistants play a vital role in the healthcare team, whether working in a hospital or a clinic, a nursing home, the community or in someone’s own home. It is highly likely that you are (or would like to become) a healthcare assistant because you enjoy working with people and have the warmth and compassion to care for and support those who are needy, vulnerable or ill. Getting care right is so important because a care relationship is a special kind of relationship that needs to be set up and maintained with compassion and skill. Respect, equal treatment and support to patients in making their own decisions are fundamental to good care work, as is the need to understand the care role and how a skilled healthcare assistant performs it. You will often deal with people in ways that cross the normal boundaries of privacy and intimacy, and which will make them feel vulnerable, so you need to support them by building trusting and respectful relationships (The Open University, 2015, p. 118).
Your role as a healthcare assistant will involve assisting in patient care and working as a member of a team under the supervision of a registered nurse or midwife who is responsible for delegating appropriate tasks to you. Your role gives enormous support to nurses who are then released to do other tasks that require more detailed knowledge, qualifications and skills.
2 Job description
If you are currently employed as a healthcare assistant you will have a job description that tells you what your main roles and responsibilities are and who you report to. You will work under the supervision of nursing staff, and your duties could include:
- helping patients to wash, shower or dress
- serving food or helping people eat
- making and changing beds
- turning patients who are bed-bound to avoid pressure sores
- talking to patients to help them feel less anxious
- helping patients to move around if they find it difficult
- giving out and collecting bedpans, and helping patients to the toilet
- making sure the ward or patients’ home is tidy
- keeping supplies and equipment in order
- taking and recording patient observations such as temperature, pulse and breathing.
Your day-to-day work may include using mobility aids and equipment to help lift and move patients. In hospitals you may also help move patients between departments. With experience, you may be involved in the induction training of new healthcare assistants.
Activity 1
You will probably have noticed that, while your job description considers some general tasks that you are expected to complete within your role, you also have specific tasks related to the setting in which you work. For example, there would be differences between working in a hospital, a community health centre or a doctor’s surgery.
If you work in a hospital, you are most likely to have been:
- washing and dressing patients
- serving meals and helping to feed patients
- helping people move around
- toileting
- making beds
- talking to patients and making them comfortable
- monitoring patients' conditions by taking temperatures, pulse, respirations and weight.
But, if you are working in a community health centre or GP surgery, you may have been:
- sterilising equipment
- checking a patient’s feet
- restocking consulting rooms
- processing lab samples
- taking blood samples (if you have been specifically trained within a phlebotomy course)
- carrying out health promotion or health education work.
Part B
Some healthcare assistants choose to take on additional training within their role. Now listen to Gail, an advanced healthcare assistant, describing some of the additional tasks she carries out as part of her role. These are over and above the general tasks listed in Part A, having taken on further training.
Transcript: Extended healthcare assistant responsibilities
Activity 2
2.1 Physical examinations
As a healthcare assistant, you may be required to carry out physical checks to monitor the health of your patients. This may require a detailed examination of particular areas of their body which are known to display some of the symptoms of their condition. For example, the side effects of their medication may result in getting a rash. It is important for healthcare assistants to understand the types of symptoms that they should be looking out for in regards to their patients’ health needs. As you carry out the examination, it benefits the patient to keep talking with them and explain what you are checking and whether it will hurt or feel strange. You may also be required to give some feedback during the consultation on what you have seen and whether you need to take any additional action. Any changes in patient health should be appropriately documented and reported to the Registered Nurse or Senior Nurse on duty.
A typical physical examination is the one for patients with diabetes. Diabetes can reduce the blood supply to feet and cause patients to lose feeling in them. As a result, feet injuries may not heal sufficiently, or they may not immediately notice them. Diabetic patients tend to have their feet examined once a year at an annual review with their doctor, but they occur more frequently if there are any signs of loss of feeling in the feet, reduced blood flow or foot ulcers where the skin surface is broken. The visual tests carried out by healthcare assistants on the feet include looking for rough or hardened skin (calluses), in-growing toenails and unusual colour changes to the skin.
Activity 3
You will now watch Kerri conduct a physical examination on a diabetic patient’s feet. As you watch the video, pay particular attention to:
- precautions taken to prevent cross-infection
- checks made on the feet
- information requested from the patient
- advice given during the foot examination.
[This video is provided for use within the course only.]
Transcript: Foot examination
Discussion
You probably noticed the following points:
- Kerri wore single-use gloves to prevent cross–infection.
- Kerri reassured the patient by explaining what she was examining for and why. She demonstrated exactly what she was going to do in terms of pressure checking on the feet, so that the patient was aware of what was about to happen.
- She checked the feet, then tested for circulation (a pulse check) and also for sensation (by touching the foot with a pointed instrument).
- Kerri asked the patient whether he moisturised his feet and checked them daily, both as part of ongoing monitoring of his health.
- Kerri advised the patient to moisturise his feet, and mentioned areas to avoid (between the toes). She also advised him how to check his feet regularly, including the use of a mirror if he could not bend down to see his toes. She told him that he should also check his shoes for stones and sharp objects.
The tasks involved in the healthcare assistant role will vary according to the area in which you work. If you are on a hospital ward supporting patients who cannot get out of bed, or receiving end-of-life care, you will be supporting them in all areas of care: maintaining hygiene, helping them to brush their teeth or providing mouth care, and making sure they are not developing pressure sores. If, however, you are working on an admissions ward, your role will be very different: helping patients to settle and feel less anxious and taking observations such as recording their breathing, pulse, body temperature or blood pressure.
3 Your personal development
Your personal development as a healthcare assistant is very important, and some essential training will have been provided by your employer as part of your induction: for example basic life support, safeguarding, moving and handling, safe food handling, hand hygiene, fire safety, measuring and recording patient details (for example pulse, temperature, breathing and weight) and communication skills. During your subsequent career there will be ongoing training and professional development to enhance your skills further, and you are likely to have a Personal Development Plan (PDP) which enables you and your manager to think about strengths and development needs, agree your aims and objectives, and demonstrate your increased competence and achievements. This is important, especially as national bodies and professional organisations regulate the healthcare workforce and protect the public from harm.
Your PDP is an important document that is usually written annually with your manager at the time of your review or appraisal. It helps you organise your personal development for the year by identifying your learning requirements within your job, and monitoring your progress against them (Skills for Care, 2015a).
As a healthcare assistant, it is important that you have adequate functional skills which include literacy, numeracy and communication skills. These should preferably be to Key Skills Level 2 or GCSE grades A–C as you are likely to be reading care plans, recording data and giving verbal messages when you are with patients and colleagues. You might think about attending your local college or finding out if your union can offer support in this area. If you are interested in learning more, you might like to visit some of the suggested websites at the end of this section.
Activity 4
It is helpful to keep a continuing professional development (CPD) file as a record of your learning, development and achievement after your initial training. In this way you can provide evidence of the courses you have attended whilst in the healthcare assistant role, which will help you to reflect on the progress you have made, and to demonstrate to prospective future employers your commitment to self-improvement. The Introducing practical healthcare badges that you can collect throughout this course are another useful way to demonstrate your learning. You may wish to download these badges to keep in your CPD file.
4 Looking after yourself
An important aspect of your demanding role in healthcare is to look after yourself, so that you keep physically and mentally healthy. Work-related stress is defined by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE, 2015) as ‘the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed upon them’.
Most people would agree that a certain amount of pressure is tolerable, even enjoyable. Different people, of course, react in different ways to pressure. Some people tolerate more than others do. But we are often at our best when the adrenalin is flowing and when we are working under pressure to achieve good results within a limited time. Problems start when the pressure becomes too great or continues for long periods. It then becomes stress. It ceases to be enjoyable. In the UK employees are absent for an average of eight days a year, and in 2013 stress, grouped with depression and anxiety, was the fourth major cause of absence in the UK (ONS 2014). The five main causes of work-related stress that CIPD identified were:
- workload
- management style
- relationships at work
- organisational change and restructuring
- lack of employee support from line managers.
Activity 5
What you have learned in this section
- The role of a healthcare assistant entails many and varied practical duties, which may differ between work settings.
- Healthcare assistants receive initial basic training, and a personal development plan (PDP) will help you identify further learning and development needs within your job. It will also contribute towards career progression.
Further information (optional)
If you are looking to develop your literacy, numeracy and communication skills, there are a number of resources you might be interested in reviewing after completing this section.
- You might find this link to the BBC Skillswise website helpful. This is a free website with courses and activities to improve your writing, maths and IT skills: www.bbc.co.uk/ skillswise
- The following site provides a more in-depth skills assessment course: www.open.edu/ openlearn/ science-maths-technology/ computing-and-ict/ information-and-communication-technologies/ key-skill-assessment-unit-information-literacy/ content-section-0.
- The Workers Educational Association (WEA) run courses and programmes which help adults return to learning skills such as literacy and numeracy: www.wea.org.uk
- This website will help you to learn at your own level: www.learnmyway.com
- Also, especially with increased use of electronic records, you may wish to improve your digital skills. If so, try following this link to the OU–Library which has an ‘Activities A–Z’ section for developing IT literacy skills (these are available in PDF form): www.open.ac.uk/ libraryservices/ beingdigital/.
- For further information on using the internet for learning, try BBC First Click: www.bbc.co.uk/ webwise
Section 1 quiz
Well done, you have now reached the end of Section 1 of Introducing practical healthcare, and it is time to attempt the assessment questions. This is designed to be a fun activity to help consolidate your learning.
There are only five questions, and if you get at least four correct answers you will be able to download your badge for the ‘The healthcare assistant role’ section (plus you get more than one try!).
- I would like to try the Section 1 quiz to get my badge.
If you are studying this course using one of the alternative formats, please note that you will need to go online to take this quiz.
I’ve finished this section. What next?
You can now choose to move on to Section 2, Working with patients and colleagues, or to one of the other sections so you can continue collecting your badges.
If you feel that you’ve now got what you need from the course and don’t wish to attempt the quiz or continue collecting your badges, please visit the Taking my learning further section, where you can reflect on what you have learned and find suggestions of further learning opportunities.
We would love to know what you thought of the course and how you plan to use what you have learned. Your feedback is anonymous and will help us to improve our offer.
- Take our Open University end-of-course survey.
References
Acknowledgements
This free course was written by Joanne Thomas (consultant for the Open University) and Emma Lipscombe (Learning and Workforce Development Officer for UNISON), with contributions from Ruth Beretta (staff tutor for the Open University).
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Figures
Figure 1: from K101 Learning Guide 4, page 9
Figure 2: © fatihhoca/iStockphoto.com
Audios
‘Extended healthcare assistant responsibilities’ including transcript: courtesy Unison (https://www.unison.org.uk/)
‘A day in the life of a hospital ward: care assistant’ including transcript: from K114 Introducing Professional Practice, © The Open University
‘Typical day on day surgery ward’ including transcript: courtesy Unison (https://www.unison.org.uk/)
Videos
‘Meeting the diabetes care team’ including transcript: from SK120 Diabetes Care, © The Open University
‘Foot examination’ including transcript: from SK120 Diabetes Care, © The Open University