Hospice Care Aides: Job Description, Education, Skills and Abilities, Earnings and Outlook
Submitted by: paula
Job Overview Hospice care aides are employees of hospice care units and agencies. They are the types of staff who help patients who are fairly or totally unable to help and take care of themselves. For those who are not employed, they travel to the patients' home and assist them with their performance of the activities of daily living. The clients they give their services to include the elderly, the disabled and those who are terminally ill.
Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required
There is no specific sets of educational requirement needed to become a hospice care worker. Most of the time, they learn the care giving skills by being an assistant of a nurse's aide or of a registered nurse. However, there is a certificating body called NAHC (National Association for Home Care and Hospice) that offers certifications after completing a 75 hour certification program to become a trained and certified hospice care aide.
Skills and Abilities
Hospice care aides take care of the patient who are usually elderly and at the same time terminally ill. As such, so much patience is required of them as they deal with irate patients who are fully dependent on their care. Empathy on their part is they key to understanding them and be able to go on to the usual routines and assistance to the activities of daily living for their patients. A helping skill as well as the many care giving skills ranging from feeding, bathing, toileting, communicating, et.al. are necessary to be able to manage them well.
Duties
Hospice care aides are like personal nurses who do not have the necessary educational requirements and license as a nurse. The scope of their practice is limited to the basic care giving roles. They either work for hospice care units in hospitals or in home cares or take individual patients from different households.
In whichever scenario, they help the helpless clients get up from bed, mobilize in and out of bed, go to the bathroom and toilet, bathe them and clean them as well as feed them and comfort them. They make sure that all of the activities that will promote living are being done with partial or full assistance for these people to be more comfortable and to survive. They spend the rest of their day entertaining them with diversional activities such as watching, reading and playing board games as tolerated by the patients.
Earnings and Job Outlook
The median salary for a hospice care aide is around 9.3 U.S. dollars on an hourly basis. The job outlook in this field is excellent and is expected to grow faster than the average for the other professions.
Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.
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