Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants

This revised edition of Essential Knowledge and Skills for Healthcare Assistants is an accessible and comprehensive text designed to equip you with the necessary skills for your practice. This book equips you with the knowledge to provide the safest and most effective patient care possible and supplies comprehensive coverage of both primary and secondary care settings, with an emphasis on primary care. It provides evidence-based guidelines to ensure best practice that is matched to the National Occupational Standards, the Care Certificate and the qualification frameworks from around the United Kingdom (UK).

The third edition includes the following:

• an all-new chapter on safeguarding and expanded coverage on communication skills;
• a comprehensive overview of the principal clinical skills that healthcare assistants (HCAs) need to master, including understanding physiological measurements, taking blood pressure, venepuncture, urinalysis, wound care, administering injections, and more;
• essential non-clinical knowledge and skills such as communication and assertiveness, reflection, accountability, confidentiality and recordkeeping, health promotion, infection control, and more;
• the evolving role of the healthcare assistant and training opportunities; and
• application to practice throughout, with numerous case studies and activities to aid understanding.

This is an essential guide for all those training as healthcare assistants, nursing associates and assistant practitioners, and a useful reference for students embarking on nursing, and health and social care programmes.