Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants


Book Description

Covering all the essential components of healthcare assistant and assistant practitioner roles, Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants is a practical and comprehensive text designed to equip you with the necessary clinical skills for your profession. This book: Equips you with the knowledge to provide the safest and most effective patient care possible Provides evidence-based guidelines to ensure best practice that is matched to the National Occupational Standards Supplies comprehensive coverage of both primary and secondary care settings with an emphasis on the role in primary care Includes information on accountability, communication skills, confidentiality and reflection Uses a light-hearted and accessible style, with definitions, case studies and activities to aid understanding Includes a Foreword written by Tanis Hand, HCA adviser at the Royal College of Nursing This is an indispensable guide for all those training as healthcare assistants and assistant practitioners, as well as a useful reference for students embarking on a degree in nursing or health and social care.




Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants and Assistant Practitioners


Book Description

This fully updated and revised edition of Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants and Assistant Practitioners is a practical and comprehensive text designed to equip you with the necessary clinical skills for your profession. This book: • equips you with the knowledge to provide the safest and most effective patient care possible; • provides evidence-based guidelines to ensure best practice that is matched to the National Occupational Standards and the Care Certificate; • includes new chapters on administering injections, ear irrigation and examining the feet of people with diabetes, and an entirely rewritten chapter on protocols; • addresses the evolving role of the healthcare assistant and training opportunities; • supplies comprehensive coverage of both primary and secondary care settings, with an emphasis on primary care; • covers accountability, communication skills, confidentiality and reflection; and • uses a light-hearted and accessible style, with definitions, case studies and activities to aid understanding. This is an indispensable guide for all those training as healthcare assistants and assistant practitioners, and an introductory textbook for students embarking on nursing and health and social care programmes.




Clinical Skills for Healthcare Assistants


Book Description

Clinical Skills for Healthcare Assistants is an accessible, easy to read guide, outlining the fundamental and core skills integral to clinical practice. Divided into three sections, the first looks at fundamental skills applicable to all staff, such as accountability, communication and record keeping. Section two explores core clinical skills for example respiratory care, pulse, blood glucose management, catheter care, and fluid balance. Section three outlines complex clinical skills that require more in-depth training and may be restricted to specialist areas of practice, such as medication, and intravenous cannulation. Each chapter follows the same easy to use structure, starting with the aims and objectives of the chapter, followed by the explanation of why the skill is performed, relevant anatomy and physiology, related aspects and terminology, how to perform the skill and common problems. Aimed primarily at healthcare assistants, this will also be a useful resource for newly qualified practitioners and students in health and social care.




Health Professions Education


Book Description

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.




Clinical Skills for Healthcare Assistants and Assistant Practitioners


Book Description

Clinical Skills for Healthcare Assistants and Assistant Practitioners is an accessible, easy-to-read guide, outlining the fundamental and core skills integral to clinical practice. Fully updated in its second edition, this book is divided into three sections; the first looks at fundamental skills applicable to all staff, such as accountability, communication and record keeping. Section two explores core clinical skills such as respiratory care, pulse, blood glucose management and catheter care. Section three outlines complex clinical skills that require more in-depth training, such as medication and intravenous cannulation. An invaluable resource for healthcare assistants and assistant practitioners, this book will also be of use to newly qualified practitioners, and students in health and social care.




Essential Practice for Healthcare Assistants


Book Description

This book is specifically aimed at healthcare assistants, and is a comprehensive text covering all aspects of care of the patient. It is written by healthcare assistants and cover the a wide range of topics: * Safety issues * Basic patient and residential care * Special care * Mental health * Learning disabilities * Paediatrics * Women and maternity * Men's care * Caring for carers * Home health care * Lifting and moving patients * Death and dying.




The Nursing Assistant


Book Description

The Nursing Assistant: Essentials of Holistic Care teaches the knowledge and skills you need to become a nursing assistant. With a sharp focus on holistic care, this text will guide you in performing the procedures required of nursing assistants while integrating and considering patients' and residents' bodies, minds, and spirits. Through rich and visual, step-by-step procedures, you will learn the techniques necessary to work in a variety of healthcare settings, including long-term and acute care. Holistic care is at the center of this book's approach to nursing assisting. This innovative approach is illustrated in the Providing Holistic Care Framework, which embodies the meaning of holistic care and communicates the importance of meeting the needs of the whole person--body, mind, and spirit. Comprehensive procedures outline techniques for properly executing the responsibilities of a nursing assistant. With easy-to-follow instructions, professional photographs, and detailed illustrations, these procedures provide important information for the certification competency examination. Practice test questions, similar to those found on the certification competency examination, can be completed at the end of each chapter. These questions are accompanied by numerous reinforcement, critical thinking, and application activities and provide an opportunity to prepare for the certification competency examination. Practice questions are also available in the Study Guide and instructors presentations for PowerPoint. Each chapter is divided into sections, making it easy to review content in manageable chunks for maximum understanding. Review questions at the end of each section help reinforce the material to solidify your learning. Professional videos demonstrating procedures are available on EduHub. After viewing these videos, you will be better able to visualize the procedural steps you must master for the certification competency examination.




Patient Safety and Quality


Book Description

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/




Improving the Quality of Long-Term Care


Book Description

Among the issues confronting America is long-term care for frail, older persons and others with chronic conditions and functional limitations that limit their ability to care for themselves. Improving the Quality of Long-Term Care takes a comprehensive look at the quality of care and quality of life in long-term care, including nursing homes, home health agencies, residential care facilities, family members and a variety of others. This book describes the current state of long-term care, identifying problem areas and offering recommendations for federal and state policymakers. Who uses long-term care? How have the characteristics of this population changed over time? What paths do people follow in long term care? The committee provides the latest information on these and other key questions. This book explores strengths and limitations of available data and research literature especially for settings other than nursing homes, on methods to measure, oversee, and improve the quality of long-term care. The committee makes recommendations on setting and enforcing standards of care, strengthening the caregiving workforce, reimbursement issues, and expanding the knowledge base to guide organizational and individual caregivers in improving the quality of care.




Fundamentals of Care


Book Description

Fundamentals of Care is an accessible introductory textbook for all health care assistants; assistant practitioners and social care support workers who are undertaking the newly introduced, mandatory Care Certificate, as well as offering a resource for providing care and support. Practically focused, each chapter begins with the outcomes associated with each standard, which helps contextualise and focus the reader on the content and relevance to the Care Certificate. The book also includes exercises to encourage the reader to stop, look, listen and act, thinking cap activity promotes further thinking and application to care and support provision along with case studies and resource files. Written to help the reader come to terms with the role and function of the heath and care assistants, Fundamentals of Care offers support to those undertaking the Care Certificate and to assist those who already work as health and care assistants, helping them in their quest to enhance safe and effective care.