Main 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.

Contents:

All Change. The Evolving Role of the Health Care Assistant. Some Useful Stuff. Reflective Practice. Understanding Delegation and Accountability. A bit about Protocols. Before You Start: The Basic Ingredients. Communicating with Patients. Simple Assertiveness Skills. Confidentiality, Consent and Record Keeping. Promoting Health. The Key Messages. Core Skills. Keeping it Clean. Hand Decontamination. Basic Physiological Measurements. Blood Pressure. Understanding and Performing an Accurate Measurement. Understanding the Heart and Performing the Electrocardiograph (ECG). Taking Blood - Why and How. Best Practice. Understanding Lung Function, Disease and Accurate Lung Function Testing. Kidney Function and Urine Testing. The Skin and Healing. Wound Care And Removal of Wound Sutures. Chaperoning - Why, When and How It Should Be Done. Finishing touches. Training for the Future. Glossary. Glossary. References. Index.