Personal Care Aide Provide personalized assistance to individuals with disabilities or illness who require help with personal care and activities of daily living support (e.g., feeding, bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, and ambulation). May also provide help with tasks such as preparing meals, doing light housekeeping, and doing laundry. Work is performed in various settings depending on the needs of the care recipient and may include locations such as their home, place of work, out in the community, or at a daytime nonresidential facility.
Personal Care Aide is Also Know as
In different settings, Personal Care Aide is titled as
- Care Provider
- Caregiver
- Direct Care Worker
- Home Care Aide
- Medication Aide
- Personal Care Aide
- Personal Care Assistant (PCA)
- Personal Care Attendant (PCA)
- Resident Assistant
- Resident Care Assistant (RCA)
Education and Training of Personal Care Aide
Personal Care Aide is categorized in Job Zone Two: Some Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Personal Care 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 Personal Care Aide
These occupations usually require a high school diploma.
Degrees Related to Personal Care 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 Personal Care 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 Personal Care Aide in different industries are
- Home Health Aides
- Nursing Assistants
- Child, Family, and School Social Workers
- Social and Human Service Assistants
- Psychiatric Aides
- Occupational Therapy Aides
- Psychiatric Technicians
- Rehabilitation Counselors
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Physical Therapist Aides
- Healthcare Social Workers
- Mental Health Counselors
- Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers
- Community Health Workers
- Registered Nurses
- First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers
- Family Medicine Physicians
- Clinical Nurse Specialists
- Patient Representatives
- Nannies
What Do Personal Care Aide do?
- Perform healthcare-related tasks, such as monitoring vital signs and medication, under the direction of registered nurses or physiotherapists.
- Administer bedside or personal care, such as ambulation or personal hygiene assistance.
- Prepare and maintain records of client progress and services performed, reporting changes in client condition to manager or supervisor.
- Perform housekeeping duties, such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes or dishes, or running errands.
- Care for individuals or families during periods of incapacitation, family disruption, or convalescence, providing companionship, personal care, or help in adjusting to new lifestyles.
- Instruct or advise clients on issues, such as household cleanliness, utilities, hygiene, nutrition, or infant care.
- Plan, shop for, or prepare nutritious meals or assist families in planning, shopping for, or preparing nutritious meals.
- Participate in case reviews, consulting with the team caring for the client, to evaluate the client's needs and plan for continuing services.
- Transport clients to locations outside the home, such as to physicians' offices or on outings, using a motor vehicle.
- Train family members to provide bedside care.
- Provide clients with communication assistance, typing their correspondence or obtaining information for them.
Qualities of Good Personal Care 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.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- 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.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- 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.
- 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.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- 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).
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- 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.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- 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.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- 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.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- 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.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- 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.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- 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.
- 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.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- 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.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Tools Used by Personal Care Aide
- Adjustable widemouth pliers
- Adjustable wrenches
- Alarm systems
- Automatic blood pressure machines
- Back braces
- Bed scales
- Bedpans
- Blood pressure cuffs
- Braille printing software
- Canes
- Crutches
- Digital cameras
- Digital video cameras
- Electronic patient thermometers
- Glucometers
- Hammers
- Hearing aid devices
- Hoyer lifts
- Hydraulic tub seats
- Lower-body prosthetic devices
- Mechanical patient lifts
- Mechanical stethoscopes
- Mechanical vibrating massage devices
- Oxygen delivery equipment
- Paging systems
- Patient lifting devices
- Personal computers
- Screwdrivers
- Shower chairs
- Specimen collection containers
- Speech synthesizers
- Tablet computers
- Telecommunication devices TDD
- Teletypewriters TTY
- Therapeutic elastic stockings
- Transfer boards
- Upper-body prosthetic devices
- Walkers
- Walking braces
- Wheelchairs
Technology Skills required for Personal Care Aide
- Appletree
- August Systems Visit Wizard
- Computer reading software
- Email software
- FaceTime
- MEDITECH software
- Mi-Co Mi-Forms
- Spreadsheet software
- Voltage SecureMail
- Word processing software