If you are wondering what is a home health aide, read on and learn. Home
health aides go by many various names including home health aide,
homemaker, personal attendant or even home medical attendant. Home
health aides are employed by families whom have elderly or disabled
family members who need assistance with care giving, and in general,
help keeping the family member at home.
What Is A Home Health Aide – job duties
Home Health Aide
Home health aides follow treatment
plans written by nurses or or doctors and work under the supervision of
family members, a registered nurse or physical therapist. Home health
aides take care of household chores for elderly or disabled patients.
They may also, by extension take care of the patients children or
parents in different cases. In general, home health aides are around to
do, generally, whatever it is the patients need done. The home health
aides job is to keep a household running as normal as possible while the
sick is at home, thereby abrogating the need to move to a nursing home
or elder care facility.
What Is A Home Health Aide?
Home
health aides often times have varying duties. These duties are often
times referred to as Activities of Daily Living or ADL’s in industry. An
aide will often times go to the same home every day for month and eve
years. Aides may also provide services to multiple families through the
course o fa day. Typical duties could include helping patients bathe,
assisting with toilets and bed pans, assisting the patient in their
movement, and other domestic duties of this nature. Home health aides
are qualified to perform other diagnostic duties such as checking pulses
and breathing rates. HHA’s are able to change bandages and they will
help patients take medicine. Another duty of home health aides is to
perform cleaning for the comfort and sanitary needs of the patient. This
cleaning can extend to light housework including the cleaning of a
patients room, kitchen or bathroom. This cleaning is often limited to
simple tasks such as straightening out a room, kitchen and bathroom.
Similarly, a HHA may help with laundry, especially changing sheets,
linens and pillow cases.
What Is A Home Health Aide – the daily tasks
Home Health Aide
Something people don’t think about when
asking themselves, What Is A Home Health Aide, has to do with the run
of the mill duties of an HHA. Some aides help plan meals and special
diets that are in dietary accordance with the patients needs. This may
mean that the HHA needs to shop for food and even prepare the meals. In
addition to these duties. home health aides provide emotional support
for their patients. Part of this emphasis on healthy holistic living may
lead the HHA to teach their patient how to take care of themselves by
doing their own healthy cooking.
Since home health aides work in
their patients’ homes, it is important for HHA’s to be strong and
physically fit. This means that the HHA is able to bend, lift and do
other thing associated with cooking, cleaning and moving the patient
around.
While some home health aides find the job and career path
to be extremely rewarding, there is a high level of turnover due to the
low skill requirements, low pay and high emotional and physical demands
of the job. You should now know everything you need to know in order to
determine What Is A Home Health Aide. So, can you answer the question:
What Is A Home Health Aide?