Health Care Assistant Review

As a health care assistant I worked along side nurses & other health care professionals to deliver excellent care to patients that came to be inpatients within the community hospital. I helped with observations, documentation and the general welfare needs of the patients. I worked within a rehabilitation ward so a lot of the time I was helping patients get back to their baseline mobility.

I’ve learned how to do venepuncture, cannulation and catheterisation. I have gotten to know a lot of the legislation behind the job that I do and why these are important. I’ve gained more skills around the way that I can help patients that I couldn’t before, it helped me to identify problems with patients before the nurses did.

I really enjoyed my programme, as part of the acute it helped with getting to know other people also; we were able to share different experiences and in turn this helped us to get a different perspective of different colleagues who worked on different wards. It was great to learn so much during the time that I studied.

The programme was very structured, at the beginning we were given a week by week, month by month calendar where it stated what module we would be learning & when. We used an application called Onefile that helped show the structure of the course & helped to research in time for the next module.

I received a lot of support from my direct line manager who was ward matron. She arranged for me to have 20% off the job learning which amounted to one day a week. I was put on relevant courses to the apprenticeship, this in turn helped me to gain the knowledge required to pass the apprenticeship.

Unfortunately we gotten got different mentors/teachers throughout the time of my apprenticeship. We were always warned before hand when there would be a change over of staff, however it was difficult when it came to teaching styles as everyone was different. My actual mentor throughout was very good & I had her in work telephone number which I could text/ring any time I had a problem with my work.

With the courses that I had gone on and with the knowledge I gained from the classroom k believe it did make me A better health care assistant. This could range from the fact that I knew more legislation & could help patients with what they were entitled to as an inpatient or using my skills like venepuncture to relieve the pressure off of the nurses.

Often there are days when things are going on around the acute. During mental health week there was a ‘well being’ bus that came and offered a range of relaxing activities to enjoy, there is also a social club just outside of the hospital which you can visit if you were to work a shift at the acute.

Yes

I really enjoy working for the NHS and the opportunities that it gives its staff. Within the NHS there is always a chance at growth and career progression and for someone like myself that is what strived me to always do better because I knew there would always be other opportunities that I could take advantage of.

To work within the NHS you need to be a people person as well as compassionate. A compassion that is not just for the job but for the patients that you are doing it for too. I think the NHS is definitely a job that you stay in for a long time as there is just so many opportunities to be had.