Member Article

Importance of mandatory training for healthcare assistants

Healthcare Assistants are medical practitioners who work in hospitals or community-based environments by and with the guidance and the consent of qualified healthcare professionals such as Medical Doctors, Dentists, Nurses and Surgeons. The roles they play vary widely depending mainly on the setting of the healthcare need at any given time. Most of the time however, they work alongside nurses and midwives and are for that reason; they are sometimes called Auxiliary Nurses or Nursing Auxiliaries.

The duties they perform include but are not limited to the following: washing and dressing patients, feeding patients, mobilising patients during mass immunisation, toiletry, bed-making, monitoring the progress of patients by gathering data concerning their body temperature, pulse rates, weight and respiration and indeed more besides. Under normal circumstance, they do work during normal office working hours, i.e. eight hours a day, five days a week excluding weekend and public holidays. During periods of emergencies however, they can be called and deployed to the scene of need outside the normal working hours.

In as much as they are not qualified healthcare professionals, the duties they perform and by extension the contributions they make towards the overall wellbeing of the society cannot be underestimated. It is therefore critical that they receive proper training in order to boost their overall productivity and forestall any possibility of them wreaking havoc to the patents they serve.

From the foregoing discussions, it is important to train health care assistants due to the following reasons: First and foremost, to acquaint them with the necessary skills and knowledge they need to perform the tasks that are delegated to them. This is by far the most crucial point since it goes without saying that a professional needs to have the technical knowhow of the task he is expected to perform first before even thinking of performing it. Under this point, the healthcare workers ought to learn of the various tools that are used in their fields, what they are used for, the procedures involved in their fields etc. Secondly, to enable them to interact and blend effectively with their supervisors as well as with their fellow Healthcare Assistants. Each profession has its own rules and regulations that each worker has to abide by. Without proper training, it would be difficult for each worker to blend with their fellow workers resulting into chaos; Thirdly, to safeguard the general public against losses, misfortunes and injuries that do result from general incompetence and or negligence of Healthcare Assistants given the fact that healthcare is a very delicate profession involving the very lives of the people; Fourthly, to help in winning the hearts and confidence of the wider public towards the healthcare institutions for which they work. The general public will normally shy away from any institution that has a track record of losses of lives or professional negligence. Furthermore, the governments under whose jurisdiction the said healthcare facilities operate will usually take drastic actions including revocation of operational licenses of the healthcare facility and Finally, to prepare Healthcare Assistants for higher education in their line of expertise. Enrolment for postgraduate studies for example will usually require a thorough study at the undergraduate level.

Several institutions world over do exist to train Healthcare Assistants. The level of training varies from apprenticeship, to certificate through to diploma then to undergraduate and to post graduate level. Adequate steps ought to be taken by a would-be Healthcare Assistant while shopping out for the best institution.es.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Charles Alabica .