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Direct care professional skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
4 min read
Direct care professional example skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical direct care professional skills. We ranked the top skills for direct care professionals based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 15.4% of direct care professional resumes contained adl as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a direct care professional needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 direct care professional skills for your resume and career

1. ADL

ADL is a clinical shorthand for "activities of daily living." It includes tasks such as feeding, dressing, bathing, and caring for one's self and personal hygiene.

Here's how direct care professionals use adl:
  • Support Individuals with Disabilities with ADL's including but not limited to feeding, baths, bowel and bladder training.
  • Supported individuals with developmental disabilities with ADL's Passed medication in accordance with the physician's orders.

2. Developmental Disabilities

Here's how direct care professionals use developmental disabilities:
  • Support children and adults with developmental disabilities in achieving a lifetime of growth through exceptional care and innovative, individualized service.
  • Collaborated with nurses and staff as a Direct Support Professional to assist individuals with developmental disabilities with their daily activities.

3. Mental Health

Mental health is the state of wellbeing in which an individual can cope with the regular stresses and tensions of life, and can work productively without having any emotional or psychological breakdown. Mental health is essential for a person of any age and helps them make the right decisions in their life.

Here's how direct care professionals use mental health:
  • Provided services to adolescents with physical and/or mental health disabilities.
  • Coordinated and consulted daily with mental health professionals to provide individual treatment plans and medical needs.

4. Autism

Here's how direct care professionals use autism:
  • Provide services and supports to individuals with mental retardation and related disabilities, head or spinal cord injuries, or autism.
  • Provided ongoing consultation and support to parents of students with autism and facilitated ongoing collaboration with parents and staff members.

5. Direct Support

Direct support is a one-on-one service that helps with daily life skills and tasks that strengthen one's independence. A direct support professional is responsible for a variety of tasks related to the general care of people with physical, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. The goal is to assist people to reach their full potential and to integrate and get engaged in their community.

Here's how direct care professionals use direct support:
  • Provide direct support and medical care to individuals with mental and physical disabilities.
  • Inspired & motivated Direct Support Professionals (DSP) through teamwork and leadership.

6. Social Work

Here's how direct care professionals use social work:
  • Worked closely with social worker to create individual goals and objectives for all children in care.
  • Worked with social workers and family on progress of individual.

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7. Incident Reports

An Incident Report, in a medical facility such as hospitals and nursing homes, is a type of paperwork filled out immediately after and in the case of an incident of some sort, with the goal of describing the incident and its consequences, as well as the measurements taken after or during the incident, as well as any other information relevant to said incident. Such an incident might be a patient acting out or a patient being injured.

Here's how direct care professionals use incident reports:
  • Monitor daily documentation records (HRI, log notes, MAR, point sheets, incident reports, etc).
  • Accounted for daily data on clients for the day, reported any incident reports as needed.

8. Compassion

Here's how direct care professionals use compassion:
  • Assisted residence with disabilities, by bathing them, feeding and showing compassion.
  • Handle crisis behavioral situations with compassion and quick problem-solving.

9. Behavior Management

Here's how direct care professionals use behavior management:
  • Taught/monitored individuals self-management skills (in health and behavior management)
  • Provide behavior management and documentation.

10. Administer Medications

Here's how direct care professionals use administer medications:
  • Administer medications according to agency policy as ordered and assigned.
  • Administer medications as specified by physician.

11. Crisis Intervention

Here's how direct care professionals use crisis intervention:
  • Become thoroughly knowledgeable in emergency procedures such as crisis intervention and on-call systems.
  • Handled emergency situations and utilized crisis interventions when necessary.

12. Medical Appointments

A medical appointment is a scheduled / specific day and time for a person to be examined or treated by a physician, nurse, or other licensed healthcare professional. The aim of the medical appointment is for the physician to be able to identify health problems or illnesses at an early stage.

Here's how direct care professionals use medical appointments:
  • Assisted service recipients with daily cares, transporting service recipients to medical appointments and community integration.
  • Accompanied individuals on community life outings, medical appointments and other activities.

13. Meal Prep

Meal prepping refers to the practice of preparing healthy meals long before the timing of its consumption. This practice is widely popular among working individuals who have very little free time on their hands. Prepping for future meals has some great health benefits apart from saving one's time as it enforces the idea of healthy eating and discourages the temptation of fast foods and takeouts.

Here's how direct care professionals use meal prep:
  • Assisted in daily living activities of individuals served including meal preparation, money management, medication administration, housekeeping and transportation.
  • Supervised and assisted residents during meal preparation, personal hygiene, grooming and recreational activities as needed.

14. Intellectual Disabilities

Here's how direct care professionals use intellectual disabilities:
  • Guide, coach and encourage individuals with intellectual disabilities Assist clients in achieving their maximum level of independence
  • Assisted persons with physical disabilities and/or intellectual disabilities working towards the individual to become independent.

15. DSP

Digital signal processing, DSP, is the use of digital processing to perform a variety of signal processing operations, primarily audio signals. It is about developing algorithms that can improve a signal in a certain way or extract useful information. It is mainly found in audio signals, voice processing, RADAR, seismology, audio, SONAR, voice recognition, and some financial signals.

Here's how direct care professionals use dsp:
  • Worked as a regular DSP, Assistant team Lead, HCBS DSP.
  • Worked with Kronos (timekeeping system) and making schedules for the DSP.
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List of direct care professional skills to add to your resume

Direct care professional skills

The most important skills for a direct care professional resume and required skills for a direct care professional to have include:

  • ADL
  • Developmental Disabilities
  • Mental Health
  • Autism
  • Direct Support
  • Social Work
  • Incident Reports
  • Compassion
  • Behavior Management
  • Administer Medications
  • Crisis Intervention
  • Medical Appointments
  • Meal Prep
  • Intellectual Disabilities
  • DSP
  • Community Outings
  • Vital Signs
  • ISP
  • Doctor Appointments
  • DCP
  • Quality Care
  • Patient Care
  • Physical Disabilities
  • Therapeutic Environment
  • Independent Living
  • Community Integration
  • Behavioral Issues
  • Emotional Support
  • Home Management
  • Food Preparation
  • Service Plan
  • Bed Linens
  • Blood Pressure
  • Urinals
  • Groceries
  • CPI
  • Data Collection
  • Client Safety
  • Mental Disabilities
  • Mental Illness
  • Cooking Meals
  • Clean Environment
  • Community Events
  • Bedpans
  • AMAP
  • Emergency First Aid
  • Nutritious Meals
  • Resuscitation
  • Oral Medications
  • Mrdd

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

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