2 Job description

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Figure 2 Healthcare assistant
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The picture shows a young, smiling female healthcare worker holding a clipboard, while two colleagues talk to a patient in the bed behind her.

Figure 2 Healthcare assistant

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.

(National Careers Service, 2015)

Activity 1

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes
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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.

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Transcript: Extended healthcare assistant responsibilities

Gail:
Me personally, um, I, I do the observations, but I also do catheterisation for males and females, um, I do venepuncture, I do ECGs—these are extended roles—so I work to my job description, but I’ve chosen to do an extended role in order to give, um, that patient more input from me.
Um, I do enemas - I do lots of other extras to my role, it’s like an extended role.
My choice, because I want to be able to give the whole care - I don’t want to have to ask somebody: “This patient needs catheterising, can you do it?”
I want to be able to do that because, that patient starts off with me and goes right through the day with me until they are discharged, so I want to be able to give that holistic care
End transcript: Extended healthcare assistant responsibilities
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Activity 2

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

1 Healthcare assistant skills and tasks

2.1 Physical examinations