For a rewarding experience if you’re a nurse, in home health care would be a good choice. You get the opportunity to change someone’s life by caring for their needs and allowing them to stay in the area they are used to. Too often, the elderly and disabled are forced into institutionalized facilities just because they have no one left to watch out for them.
When a patient is suddenly immersed in an unfamiliar setting, that patient can suffer a setback. Unfamiliar people and surroundings can cause depression or increase stress, impeding the patient’s ability to recover, and even dampening his will to live. When the will to live goes down, according to many experts, the ability to recover is also impeded. Stressful circumstances, then, can have a double effect on patient health.
In the case of an older person, who may have already lost a spouse, comforting surroundings are especially important. Taking into consideration how long they may have lived in one place, suddenly moving them to a place that they are unfamiliar with can be devastating.
Whether you are required to pass a state competency exam is a matter determined by the particular state in which you currently reside. There are states which do not make licensing or certification a requirement. There are numerous staffing agencies that handle requests for home healthcare aides, and this has long been the traditional method of hiring for such a position. If you should relocate once you have already gone through your training, you should be sure to take your prior documentation along to submit to the new staffing agency. The same holds true if you seek a position with a nursing registry.
Nowadays, a lot of folks are covered by either Medicare or Medicaid. To obtain employment with either of these departments, home healthcare aides need a minimum of 75 hours of training. Sometimes they are also required to take a test to demonstrate whether they are sufficiently competent. If you contemplate employment with a licensed private agency, then you must have 40 training hours and take a competency test as well. However, there are agencies which have even higher recruiting standards. Each agency has its own policies.
If you are planning to seek work through a nurse’s registry, you will have to provide proof of completing at least 40 hours of training for health aides in either a public vocational school or a private career school licensed by the state, or a home health agency. These requirements are in place to assure clients of the qualifications of their home health care worker.
Training sometimes can be obtained through a home health agency that you work for as an aide. To help you get training to enter a better paying field and to help recruit more workers for an industry that is growing daily these agencies will offer free or reduced training if you meet certain criteria. These agencies are not allowed to train you unless they are licensed by the state in which they operate.
One of the basic requirements for employment by a home health agency is that employees undergo at least two hours of HIV/AIDS training. Another requirement is a current certificate in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Every two years, the employee must also pass a one-hour in-service HIV/AIDS training .
Aides employed by Medicare and Medicaid organizations are required to have completed 12 hours of in-service training within a one year period. Any CPR training may be included as part of this requirement.
Obviously, this sort of position does not require a great deal of learning on your part. Nevertheless, you should expect to work those shifts which most employees consider undesirable. As is generally the case, those who have seniority get to choose the most desirable time slots, but the advantages of this position are greater than any of its disadvantages.
Finding satisfaction in your job is sometimes quite rare in the workplace. However, knowing that you have given someone the opportunity to stay in a familiar environment and avoid ending up with strangers can give you the satisfaction that you desire.
Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities; prevention of illness and injury; alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human responses; and advocacy in health care for individuals, families, communities, and populations.
– Bruno Auger