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About HCA jobs
Health care assistants looking for HCA jobs know they'll be playing a key role in helping other healthcare professionals in the day-to-day care of the patients under their responsibility. Places of work for HCA jobs tend to be in more clinical settings (hospitals, nursing homes, community nursing centres, or in a patient's own home). HCAs, strictly speaking, are NVQ3 trained and are more involved in the clinical aspect of patient care than, for instance, an untrained care assistant; trained HCAs can carry out simple but important observations like taking a patient’s blood pressure and temperature or, with further qualifications, they can become phlebotomists (qualified to take blood samples from patients).
Previous work experience, whether it has been voluntary or paid work as a carer, is looked upon favourably, especially if you are looking to enter into the side of the industry that deals with mental health issues or people with learning disabilities too. To gain the necessary experience a person can contact the voluntary services coordinator of their NHS trust and get all the necessary information on how to become a volunteer carer. You might also want to investigate the NVQ courses applicable to healthcare assistants.
HCA jobs are very rewarding because they involve helping patients in a wide variety of situations, and in numerous ways. A day at work can include bathing or showering a patient, serving them food and helping them eat if need be, talking, taking bloods.
Obtaining HCA jobs can be hard if you don't have the necessary experience. However, the best way to gain this is to get involved in care jobs in the voluntary or community sector. The experience gained in this way, will stand you in good stead later on as it will show you have the necessary skill, capability as well as ambition to follow a career in healthcare.
For more information about job as an HCA read our article ‘How to become a healthcare assistant with no formal care experience’.








