What is a Health Care Assistant?

Healthcare assistants play a vital role in the healthcare system, ensuring their patients’ comfort and privacy during the recovery process. The role of healthcare assistant is an excellent entry level position in the healthcare sector and as well as a valuable job in its own right, it also offers an opportunity for progression on to many other NHS roles.

This post will cover what you need to know if you want to become a Health Care Assistant (HCA). We’ll answer important questions like what are the duties of a health care assistant and what skills and qualifications you will need to apply for a healthcare assistant job.

What does a health care assistant do?

Healthcare assistants work within the National Health Service under the guidance of other healthcare professionals such as nurses. A standard working week for a healthcare assistant will involve a mix of shifts that could include early starts, evenings, nights and weekends.

Specific healthcare assistant responsibilities will depend on what type of healthcare setting you are working in.

For example, health care assistant jobs in a NHS hospital are likely to involve helping patients to wash and dress, serving food and helping to feed patients, helping patients to move around and generally making them feel more comfortable. Some HCAs may also help to monitor a patient’s condition, for example by taking their temperature, blood pressure and pulse.

Other HCAs work in GP surgeries and NHS health centres. Here they are likely to carry out duties like sterilising equipment, restocking consulting rooms and helping with health education work. They may also be trained to take blood samples and process samples for the lab.

What skills does a healthcare assistant need?

Healthcare assistants spend a lot of time working with patients, so if you want to work as a healthcare assistant you need to have good people skills. You should be kind and caring, with a friendly nature and good communication skills.

The role of a healthcare assistant involves a lot of hands-on care, and you need to be willing to carry out personal care such as helping patients with going to the toilet, washing or showering.

You will also need to be well organised and have good observation skills, so that you can assess your patient’s condition and update their records.

What qualifications does a healthcare assistant need?

There are no mandatory entry requirements for health care assistants so it is an excellent introduction into the healthcare sector.

You will need good literacy and numeracy skills and employers may require you to have GCSEs or equivalent qualifications in English and Maths. A healthcare qualification such as a BTEC or NVQ would be useful, and so would the Care Certificate course. This can be studied online, which makes it very easy to fit around your existing commitments.

Although healthcare assistant jobs tend to be entry level roles, it would be useful to have some experience of healthcare or social care work on your CV. If you don’t have any appropriate work experience, you may be able to secure volunteer work in the care sector at a care home or providing in-home care. You could also show that you have some relevant transferable skills, for example from previous customer service or retail jobs.

Health Care Assistant training

Many healthcare employers provide an initial six month probation period during which you will go through your introductory healthcare assistant training. This will include basic nursing skills and mandatory training for healthcare assistants, and you will also complete the Care Certificate training if you don’t already hold this.

Once you have completed your probationary period, you could go on to train to become a senior healthcare assistant, assistant practitioner or nursing associate. There is also the potential to train for degree-level healthcare roles, for example nurse, midwife or occupational therapist.

The Caredemy Care Certificate online course and our other health care assistant training courses can all be booked through the course pages. Alternatively, please contact our Student Support team to book your course over the phone or for further information on any of our healthcare assistant courses.