If you want to work as a home attendant, make sure you’re passionate about assisting the disabled or elderly. You should be a caring, patient individual who is dedicated to providing the best possible service to people in their homes. You should carefully assess your skill areas so you know which types of job services you’ll be able to provide for home-bound patients, as home attendants may do anything from cleaning to personal grooming to driving people to appointments.
Lifting patients is something you should think about because physical lifting people, such as from a bath to a wheelchair, requires back health as well as strength. If you aren’t physically capable of doing so, you should look for jobs where the client uses electronic lifting devices. If you want to work as a home attendant, you should think about how much housework you’ll have to do, though light housekeeping is the norm.
Home attendants are typically responsible for doing laundry, light dusting, and a quick vacuum. You’ll almost certainly be expected to shop for, prepare, serve, and clean up after meals. A home attendant’s responsibilities often include feeding, bathing, dressing, toileting, and grooming disabled or elderly patients. If you want to work as a home attendant and drive, you may be assigned patients to drive to doctor’s appointments or social events at a community recreation center. Even if you don’t drive, reading to patients or playing a card game with them can usually help provide them with social activity.
It’s important to remember that the various home attendant jobs and responsibilities are extremely diverse. It’s impossible to have all of the skills that might be required if you want to work as a home attendant. Create a list of skills you can offer and look for jobs that require them.
Volunteering at a hospital is a good way to get experience as a home attendant, especially if you can work under the supervision of a nurse who can provide assistant training. A home attendant with nursing assistant training frequently checks vital signs and administers prescribed medications to a homebound patient. Another common duty of this type of attendant, also known as a home health aide, is changing dressings as part of wound care. Volunteer work and a nurse’s recommendation can help you land a job as a home attendant.