Casual healthcare assistant role with no experience

[Elizo]

Hi all,

I am hoping to move into healthcare (doing second degree) and want some HCA experience to see if I am any good at it. Studying f/t so this would need to be casual or bank. Anyway to do this with no relevant experience - flexible about care home/ visiting homes (although no car)/ hospital/ hospice? How do you start?

Thanks for advice

What field of healthcare are you looking to specialise in?

You can usually apply to a hospital bank team (might also be called the temporary staffing office or bureau) directly - the details should be available through the hospital website. Sometimes, they advertise on the NHS jobs website.

If you are a successful applicant, you will be put through induction and a couple of supernumerary shifts to learn the routine. There are usually lots of shifts available.

Try care homes they are crying out for bank staff. They'll put you through all of your training, and give you shadow shifts before you have your first shift. Choose wisely though. I work for a healthcare company and we provided a lot of training for staff regardless of role (some say too much 😂), but I've trained staff who've joined us from other companies and they've done very little training or worse still, have had none at all!
It's a rewarding career. There are so many different avenues you can go down. Good luck!

This is the thing I don't know yet. Am doing a bio-chem degree so anything from nursing to radiography to paramedic to medicine (prob not as older) to healthcare science, so need to get some experience and see if I am a fit. Figure care work would rule in/ out some options

Can I just check do you mean apply directly to an individual care home?

Approaching local domicilary care agencies also an idea but same as with care homes, they are far from equal in terms of training etc. What pretty much all of them are is desperate for staff. One of my DHs best carers, lovely young woman, literally walked in off the street asking about work and had an interview straight away.

Thanks - is that going round to people's houses? Am fine with that - although carless (in a city and can drive)

Yes. I think especially in an urban area it wouldn't be a problem, quite a number of our carers don't drive and it's much more rural (lots of car shares/lifts)

Great. I'll get onto that.

Quite a few of our carers are fitting it in around study, family etc. I think you are doing a good thing in actually getting the hands on to see how you feel and I'm sure it would help with applications for eg nursing. Good luck!

I worked in a nursing home to get care experience before doing a nursing degree and then went onto working for an agency doing domicilliary care.

Was great experience but put me off nursing for life!! It's a pretty thankless job OP in truth, exhausting and you need to have VERY strong boundaries as to when you can work. I asked every week for 20 hours and most weeks got 40 plus.

Thanks. It would be very p/t for me as I will study f/t and have other responsibilities but figure better to find out now if it's going to put me off nursing etc