Nursing Assistant Jobs | Nurse Aide Jobs | Home Health Aide Careers
Certified Nurse Assistant Jobs - What is the Job of a Nursing Aide? What do Nursing Aide Jobs Involve?
Nursing assistants are responsible for helping to care for the physically and mentally ill, as well as the disabled. Nursing assistants may also be known as the direct care or home health aide workers. There are three major types of medical aides, including nursing aides, psychiatric aides, and home Health aides.
Psychiatric aides are responsible for helping psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses to manage mentally unstable patients. But they may help mental health patients dress and groom themselves, as well as socialize with them. An example of an activity a psychiatric aid may conduct would be playing card games with a patient or participating in group therapy activities. Psychiatric nursing assistants will also escort mental patients to and from treatments.
Home health aides are responsible for helping the disabled and elderly remain in their own homes as opposed to nursing care facilities or hospitals. Health care aides will take a patient’s temperature, help them perform some exercise, and help them groom themselves and eat. Sometimes home health aides will also work with disabled people and patients who have been discharged from a hospital on a short term basis.
Some home health aides will also be allowed to operate medical equipment such as ventilators, with the proper training and certification.
Nursing aides, also commonly called nursing assistants, certified nursing assistants, or hospital assistants, provide basic care for patients such as making sure that they are served meals, tidying up rooms, and checking the patients respiratory rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.
Certified nursing assistants will also escort patients to and from operating rooms, and are responsible for storing medical supplies and setting up medical equipment. Nursing assistants are also responsible for observing a patient’s health and reporting any significant changes to a nurse or doctor.
Working Conditions for Nurse Practitioner Jobs - How is the Working Environment for Certified Nursing Assistant Jobs?
Nursing assistants will usually spend 40 hours a week working, although nursing shifts may include nights and weekends as some patients need care around the clock. The nursing assistant job itself can be challenging physically, as home health care aides are responsible for moving patients out of bed and helping them walk around.
Home health aides must be adept at following the correct exercises in order to lift and move patients. Some nursing assistants may visit their patients’ homes on a sporadic basis, or spend a good portion of the day caring for them. A home health aide job can last for months or even years, and these medical professionals will usually make house calls for different patients on the same day.
In addition, home health aides must deal with unpleasant individuals, who are in pain, as well as having the unsavory duty of emptying bedpans.
Certified Nursing Assistant Training - How to Become a Certified Nursing Assistant - How to Receive Your Education from Certified Nursing Assistant Classes
Nursing aides and home health care aides are trained in a variety of environments including community college and nursing care facilities. Nursing aide classes can cover personal care, which is how to teach patients how to bathe and groom themselves, nutrition, anatomy, infection control, and body mechanics. Due to their nursing assistant work with mentally ill patients, psychiatric aides may need to obtain certification in a formal training program in order to practice in their state.
On the job, home health care and certified nursing assistant training can take as long as a few months, during which attendees will learn in lecture rooms, workshops, and on the job training.
Certified Nurse Assistant Jobs - How to Become Certified as a Psychiatric Aide
While certification is not required in most states in order to become a nursing aide, a psychiatric aid, or a home healthcare aide, the Federal government still has guidelines if one of these professionals receives payments for Medicare. Home health aides must pass a basic examination, and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice offers voluntary certification.
Nursing aide jobs will require 75 hours of training on the job, and an evaluation, after which these individuals are called certified nurse assistants.
Other skills that home health aides should have include patience, and an inability to communicate and empathize with their patients.
Outlook for Nursing Assistant Careers - What is the Future of Nursing Assistant Employment?
Over the next decade, employment of home health care aides and nursing aides should grow by about 28%, a very rapid pace compared to the average growth of jobs in America. Due to an aging population, nursing care facilities and home health care services are booming. To cut costs, hospitals and patients want to get out of medical institutions as soon as possible, so the transition to medical aides is made as quickly as possible.
Home health aide jobs are expected to be the fastest area of growth, as more elderly individuals wish to remain independent but still need extended care. The demand for psychiatric nurse aides is expected to remain steady, as more outpatient methods are used instead of hospitalization of the mentally ill.
Anyone hoping to enter the field of home healthcare employment should have no problem finding employment, as the amount of openings greatly outstrips demand due to low rates of pay and high physical demands.
Certified Nursing Assistant Salary - How Much Do Certified Nurse Assistant Jobs Earn?
In 2006, nursing attendants and orderlies jobs earned an hourly salary of $10.67. Those nursing assistants working for local government earned the highest rate of median pay at $12.15.
Home health care aides had median hourly earnings of $9.34 over the same time period, with those working in community care receiving less pay at $8.87 an hour.
Due to their work with the mentally ill, psychiatric aides earned $11.49 an hour, with those working for state governments earning the highest median salary at $13.27.