Working as a healthcare assistant/HCA

[unemployedd]

I'm wanting to pursue a career in healthcare, and want to gain experience working in a hospital setting to see if I want to try and go down the nursing or medicine route. I also want to make sure my feeling of a 'calling' to working in healthcare actually stands its ground when I'm confronted with the realities of working in a hospital.

I've got an interview for a HCA position in an outpatients department coming up. I'm a little nervous about the role as I've not worked with the general public before, and I can be quite quiet and shy and think I come across as quite naive and sheltered. I've only ever worked office jobs before so it's a complete change and new environment for me. However, I'm friendly and caring and like to keep busy/use my initiative.

What's working as a HCA like and what makes someone a good HCA?

Thank you

A HCA in outpatients is a completely different role to a HCA on a ward, you won't gain much insight into the nitty gritty of nursing/healthcare in outpatients. That's more or less calling patients into the clinic room, taking weight, maybe BP, maybe doing some dressings. Good place to start but for real experience aim for ward working.

Think about dealing with difficult people, diversity and inclusion.

If you're able to speak/listen and work as part of a team then you're halfway there.

HCA can be a transferable role so just see where this takes you and go from there. Good luck!

Following, as I am training as a HCA. Advice to me has been to get solid experience in aged care, where the real nitty-gritty happens, then stepping out into hospital or community work. Good luck OP! Let us know how you get on.

Outpatients won’t give you a real sense of what working in the nhs is like. It’s usually well staffed, 9-5 no weekends with relatively calm attendees. Try and do some bank shifts on A&E or a medical ward to get some sense of what you would be letting yourself in for.

As others have said, Outpatients is not the nitty gritty side of HCA work. I used to book bank shifts in Outpatients for a break when I was an HCA.

Try adult elderly medical wards. Always short staffed, always challenging. That's not to say it can't be very rewarding too at times. Your biggest restraint will be time. We would often have 2 or 3 HCAs to a 36 bed ward (full staffing would be 6) and at any given time most of our patients would require full personal care (washing, dressing, teeth brushing, toileting etc). We also had a lot of patients with dementia or temporary delirium (usually due to infection) who needed our time.

I would say what makes a good HCA is to be kind, caring, respectful & give everyone the time they need. The last one of those will be the hardest.