HHA Certification

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Home Health Aide Duties You Might Not Be Aware Of

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A Home Health Aides duties are not all about taking temperatures and making sure medications are taken. Here are a few of the most unusual tasks.

A Certified Home Health Aide is essentially a Certified Nursing Assistant with a supplemental certification that allows them to provide their services in a patient’s home.  Because of this special environment, Home Health Aide duties are very different from what a licensed CNA would perform in a traditional clinical setting.  There is a misconception that as an HHA the majority of your time will be spent administering medical related services to your patients, this is simply not the case.  The fact is that most of a Home Health Aide’s duties are not health care related at all, and some tasks may seem completely strange to most health care professionals.

What are Some of the Stranger Duties of a Home Health Aide?

Playing Cards

A huge part of a Home Health Aide’s responsibility is to simply provide companionship for the patient.  This companionship can take on many forms, from accompanying the patient on trips to the doctor to sitting down and eating meals with the patient.  hha job dutiesSince many patients that receive home health care are elderly, it is common for them to ask their HHA to play cards with them.  Before video games and even modern board games, playing cards was a huge form of home entertainment and most older patients love to play card games.  It would be wise for students that are going through their Home Health Aide Training to also brush up on some of the classic card games like Hearts, Gin, and Bridge.  There will be times when, for your own sanity, you’ll need to find something to entertain both you and your patient.

Walking the Dog

home health aide dutiesThere are many reason people choose to receive care at home versus a nursing or convalescent home and one of the big reasons is that they have pets that they could not bring with them.  In cases where the patient has a dog or dogs and is basically immobile, someone will have to take the dogs out to get exercise, and guess who that might be?  It is not uncommon for a Home Health Aide to be asked to take the patients dog around the block, or at the very least, out to a grass area to do their business.

Arranging Furniture

When a person is home bound for long periods of time, even the slightest change of scenery can provide immense joy.  It may not seem like a lot, but moving a couch from one side of the room to the other may be enough to brighten someone’s day?  You aren’t expected to carry furniture up stairs or load a truck, but it is very likely that you will be asked to do some rearranging of couches, chairs, lamps, etc.  Especially during the holidays when some patients will want to bring out decorations that may require you to relocate some existing furnishings.

Don’t let these odd seeming tasks scare you away from going after your Home Health Aide Certification.  These types of tasks are not typical, but very likely possible.  Rest assured there are many others that may seem even more strange than these, but the bottom line is that a Home Health Aide’s duties are as varied as the clients they serve and are essential for the health and happiness of those that depend on them to get through their days.

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