Home Health Aide Monitor the health status of an individual with disabilities or illness, and address their health-related needs, such as changing bandages, dressing wounds, or administering medication. Work is performed under the direction of offsite or intermittent onsite licensed nursing staff. Provide assistance with routine healthcare tasks or activities of daily living, such as feeding, bathing, toileting, or ambulation. May also help with tasks such as preparing meals, doing light housekeeping, and doing laundry depending on the patient's abilities.
Home Health Aide is Also Know as
In different settings, Home Health Aide is titled as
- Caregiver
- Certified Home Health Aide (CHHA)
- Certified Medical Aide (CMA)
- Certified Nurses Aide (CNA)
- Home Attendant
- Home Care Aide
- Home Health Aide (HHA)
- Home Health Provider
- Hospice Aide
- In Home Caregiver
Education and Training of Home Health Aide
Home Health Aide is categorized in Job Zone Two: Some Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Home Health Aide
Some previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is usually needed. For example, a teller would benefit from experience working directly with the public.
Education Required for Home Health Aide
These occupations usually require a high school diploma.
Degrees Related to Home Health Aide
- Bachelor in Home Health Aide/Home Attendant
- Associate Degree Courses in Home Health Aide/Home Attendant
- Masters Degree Courses in Home Health Aide/Home Attendant
Training Required for Home Health Aide
Employees in these occupations need anywhere from a few months to one year of working with experienced employees. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Home Health Aide in different industries are
- Nursing Assistants
- Personal Care Aides
- Psychiatric Aides
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Occupational Therapy Aides
- Paramedics
- Physical Therapist Aides
- Psychiatric Technicians
- Emergency Medical Technicians
- Physical Therapist Assistants
- Emergency Medicine Physicians
- Occupational Therapy Assistants
- Nurse Practitioners
- Registered Nurses
- Medical Assistants
- Family Medicine Physicians
- Clinical Nurse Specialists
- Occupational Therapists
- Recreational Therapists
- Acute Care Nurses
What Do Home Health Aide do?
- Maintain records of patient care, condition, progress, or problems to report and discuss observations with supervisor or case manager.
- Provide patients with help moving in and out of beds, baths, wheelchairs, or automobiles and with dressing and grooming.
- Provide patients and families with emotional support and instruction in areas such as caring for infants, preparing healthy meals, living independently, or adapting to disability or illness.
- Entertain, converse with, or read aloud to patients to keep them mentally healthy and alert.
- Plan, purchase, prepare, or serve meals to patients or other family members, according to prescribed diets.
- Direct patients in simple prescribed exercises or in the use of braces or artificial limbs.
- Check patients' pulse, temperature, and respiration.
- Change dressings.
- Perform a variety of duties as requested by client, such as obtaining household supplies or running errands.
- Accompany clients to doctors' offices or on other trips outside the home, providing transportation, assistance, and companionship.
- Care for children who are disabled or who have sick or disabled parents.
- Massage patients or apply preparations or treatments, such as liniment, alcohol rubs, or heat-lamp stimulation.
- Care for patients by changing bed linens, washing and ironing laundry, cleaning, or assisting with their personal care.
- Administer prescribed oral medications, under the written direction of physician or as directed by home care nurse or aide, and ensure patients take their medicine.
- Bathe patients.
Qualities of Good Home Health Aide
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
Tools Used by Home Health Aide
- Abdominal binders
- Anti-embolism elastic stockings
- Bathtub seats
- Bed cradles
- Canes
- Crutches
- Desktop computers
- Electronic blood pressure cuffs
- Enema equipment
- Foot boards
- Gait belts
- Glucometers
- Heat lamps
- Home care ventilators
- Hoyer lifts
- Ice caps
- Ice collars
- Knee braces
- Lower extremity prosthetic devices
- Manual blood pressure cuffs
- Notebook computers
- Ostomy bags
- Oxygen equipment
- Patient lifters
- Personal digital assistants PDA
- Restraints
- Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation TENS equipment
- Upper extremity prosthetic devices
- Urinalysis test strips
- Walkers
- Walking braces
- Wheelchairs
Technology Skills required for Home Health Aide
- AIGHD OASIS
- Enterprise resource planning ERP software
- FaceTime
- Linux
- Mi-Co software
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Exchange
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Microsoft Windows
- Microsoft Word
- Oracle Database
- Python
- Salesforce software
- SAP software
- UNIX
- Web browser software
- Word processing software