How to Become the Home Health Aide You’d Want for Your Loved One

Son and Father

Home health care can be a blessing for older adults. Instead of finding themselves in a distant care facility, far from everything they know and love, they’re able to receive the necessary assistance from the comfort of their own home, even if they’re frail or ill.

Home health aides (HHA) make this service possible. Every day, they help their patients perform basic functions—bathing, clothing, cooking, taking medication. Being the best HHA requires patience, compassion, and the knowledge you can only acquire by getting the best home attendant training in NYC.

Becoming an Accomplished HHA

It takes a certain kind of person to succeed at the job. Great HHAs possess at least six natural qualities:

  • Compassion
  • Patience
  • Alertness
  • Honesty
  • Dependably
  • Communication skills

Becoming a competent HHA also takes expertise. In order to become the type of home health aide you would want taking care of your own parents or loved ones, you should be:

Well-Trained

As a home health aide, you’ll not only clean and cook for elderly adults. You’ll also dispense medication, change non-sterile dressings, and monitor your patients’ health. You must know how to take vital signs—temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate. You should be able to help your elderly charges do prescribed exercises and manage artificial limbs. You will often be the first to spot dangerous situations or changes in a patient’s condition.

All of these tasks require knowledge and skill.

Even the more mundane chores—helping a dementia sufferer cook his meals; assisting a frail woman to get dressed in the morning—require a certain level of professional competence. In the end, your daily contact with the patient will put you on the frontlines of senior health care. Success requires proper training.

Home Health Aide Patient

Experienced

The right training will go beyond the classroom environment. It will also include practical experience. When you become an HHA, you’ll be entering a hands-on career, one that requires real-world knowledge in addition to classroom knowledge. A good training program will offer clinical assignments, so students can get their feet wet by putting their newly learned skills to good use before they head out into the job market.

Finally, being a good home health aide means nothing if you can’t connect up with an equally good care agency. Placement in a well-respected home health care agency is critical if you want to gain the experience you’ll need to be one of New York City’s top HHAs. That’s why the best training programs help their students make the transition to employment.

How to Find the Right Training Program

In order to learn the trade, you must first attend home health aide classes in NYC, and not just any classes. Ideally, you’re looking for a training program presided over by qualified and experienced professionals, a training program that instructs students in the latest procedures and methods.

Flexible schedules and affordable tuition are also critical for students who are managing the transition to a new career. Finally, the training program should be fully licensed with the New York State Department of Education. If you’re looking for HHA training in NYC that meets all of these requirements, contact ABC Training Center to learn more about our home health aide training in NYC.