Health Care Assistant (HCA)

A healthcare assistant, also known as an HCA, plays a vital role in caring for people. They can make a real difference to someone’s quality of life.

In a healthcare assistant role, you’re likely to carry out a number of duties from helping to feed and wash a patient, assist with testing urine or blood to perform ECG’s (with training).

You don’t need to have any formal qualifications to become a healthcare assistant, but what you do need to have is compassion for other people, the ability to learn on the job, and if you want to progress in the clinical field the relevant training. If you have these skills, you can undertake this rewarding job. We expect good literacy and numeracy skills. If you have a healthcare qualification, such as BTEC or NVQ there is room to progress in the job role.

Healthcare assistant duties can vary depending where you are working. Some of the duties include;

• Serving meals and helping to feed patients.
• Helping people to move around.
• Toileting.
• Making beds
• Talking to patients and making them comfortable.
• Monitoring patients’ conditions by taking temperatures, pulse, respirations and weight.

The job of healthcare assistant is a demanding one, so you need to be prepared for the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of the job.

As an HCA you might be involved with looking after patients with mental health issues, who are terminally ill or suffer from dementia depending on your role and your setting. So, be prepared and be strong, as you might be caring for patients who make demands on your time or require ‘end of life’ care (better known as ‘palliative care’).

This type of care involves the HCA bringing a great deal of compassion, patience and dedication to the role and the patient.

To be a healthcare assistant, you'll need to be

• caring and kind
• cheerful and friendly
• willing to be hands-on with patients
• willing to do personal care tasks (washing, toileting, etc)
• able to follow instructions and procedures
• able to work in a team but use their own initiative

You'll also need

• communication skills, including listening
• organisation skills
• observational skills

What is the best part of being a healthcare assistant?

Being a healthcare assistant can be a very rewarding experience, as it is a ‘people facing’ profession. An HCA is very often working with the elderly, infants and young people who need help for whatever reason.

Halle Healthcare:

To enable our staff to provide great quality and person-centred care and support, they need to be able to relate to the people they are supporting and their conditions. As a specialist provider, we are experts in providing the right support for a wide range of different conditions. As one of our managers told us, “You need to walk a mile in someone’s shoes to be able to truly understand them and their needs”. Part of our staff trainings will focus on the specific specialisms relevant to the service they’ll be supporting. Below are the key specialisms we support.

When you join our complex care team, you’ll be trained in a variety of specialised skills covering clinical and nurse-led practices.

All training and competencies are based on national guidelines from the NHS, Great Ormond Street Hospital and other clinical settings. These are crucial in how we train our staff.

You’ll be trained by experienced nurses called clinical educators, who will support you to get to grips with every element involved in providing safe and effective care for adult and young people in their homes.

The care you deliver will be overseen by a clinical nurse manager who is on hand to ensure that support is safe, clinically sound and meets the needs of those you are supporting.

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Zero hours contract
Contract length: 7 days
Part-time hours: 33 per week

Salary: £10.00-£12.00 per hour

Benefits:

• Flexitime

Schedule:

• 10 hour shift
• 12 hour shift
• 8 hour shift
• Day shift
• Flexitime
• Holidays
• Monday to Friday
• Night shift
• No weekends
• Overtime
• Weekend availability
• Weekends only

COVID-19 considerations:
All staff are required to abide by the Covid precautions tht have been set out by our clients when going to a job.

Work authorisation:

• United Kingdom (required)

Shift availability:

• Day shift (required)
• Night shift (required)
• Overnight shift (required)

Work Location: One location

Reference ID: Healthcare Assistant