What is a Home Health Aide?
What is a Home Health Aide or Personal Care Aide?
Personal care aides and home health aides help people who are elderly, disabled, ill, and/or mentally disabled to live in their own homes or in assisted living facilities instead of in health facilities or institutions. Most personal care aides and home health aides work with clients who need more extensive personal care and assistance with activities of daily living than family or friends can provide. Some aides work with families in which a parent is incapacitated and small children need care. Others help discharged hospital patients who have relatively short-term needs.
Personal care aides (sometimes referred to as homemakers, caregivers, companions and personal attendants) provide routine personal care and some housekeeping services. They clean clients’ houses, do laundry, and change bed linens. Aides may plan meals, shop for food, and cook. Aides also may help clients get out of bed, bathe, dress, and groom. Some accompany clients to doctors’ appointments or on other errands. They provide physical and emotional support to their clients. They may assist in toilet training a severely mentally handicapped child, or they may just listen to clients talk.
Home health aides may do all the above, but also can assist with health-related tasks, may check a client’s blood pressure or temperature, or assist with certain medical equipment.
The aide’s daily routine may vary. Aides often visit four or five clients on the same day. Other aides may go to the same home every day for months or even years. Some clients are in need of more care and attention, which may require the aide to work with other aides in shifts to provide coverage around the clock. The aide will receive detailed instructions regarding when to visit each client and what services to perform.
In all cases, the aide follows a plan of care prepared by a registered nurse. The plan of care specifies the tasks the aide is allowed to perform for the particular client. Aides keep records of services performed, and of the client’s condition and progress. They report changes in the client’s condition to the supervisor or nurse. Because the aide is often the person who spends the most time with the client, communication is very important. A nurse or therapist will supervise the aide’s performance in following the care plan, in the patient’s home, at intervals determined by the program the client is in. In general, home health aides are supervised every two weeks, and personal care aides may be supervised every three to six months.
Aides are individually responsible for getting to the client’s home. They may spend a good portion of the work day traveling from one client to another. Aides must be careful to avoid over-exertion or injury when they assist clients. Work environments differ from case to case. Some homes are neat and pleasant, while others are untidy and depressing. Some clients are cheerful and cooperative; others are angry, abusive, depressed, or otherwise difficult. Aides must be able to adapt to the situation. For really difficult situations, help is only a phone call away.
About a third of aides work part time, and some work weekends or evenings to suit the needs of their clients
