What does a health care assistant do?

A certified medical assistant (CMA) or certified nurse assistant (CNA) is a healthcare professional who performs clinical and administrative duties in clinics or medical facilities. Certified medical assistants provide excellent customer service to patients arriving and departing from the medical facility and administer injections or medications to their patients. In administrative duties, certified medical assistants are tasked to help clients submit insurance claims and encode medical records to the computer system. They also can work with specialized physicians such as ophthalmologists and podiatrists.

There are some key differences in the responsibilities of each position. For example, health care assistant responsibilities require skills like "healthcare," "patient appointments," "ehr," and "patient education." Meanwhile a typical certified medical assistant/certified nurse assistant has skills in areas such as "rehabilitation," "phone calls," "medical terminology," and "infection control." This difference in skills reveals the differences in what each career does.

A health aide is responsible for providing care and assistance to patients in medical facilities, care centers, and even at home. They typically help patients by administering medicines, monitoring their blood pressure and vital signs, facilitating exercises, preparing meals, providing emotional support, and assisting them in performing hygienic tasks such as bathing, dressing, brushing teeth, and going to the toilet. Furthermore, as a health aide, it is essential to monitor the behavior and progress of patients, reporting to nurses and physicians regularly.

While some skills are similar in these professions, other skills aren't so similar. For example, resumes show us that health care assistant responsibilities requires skills like "customer service," "healthcare," "patient appointments," and "direct patient care." But a health aide might use other skills in their typical duties, such as, "community health," "patient care," "health services," and "math."

Home health aides provide care and assistance to patients who have chronic illnesses, injuries, disabilities, or age-related challenges inside the patient's home. They monitor the patient's condition and help them in any activity they may need assistance in. They provide support to both the patient and the family to manage the patient's condition. Home health aides care for the patient by providing personal services like bathing and basic grooming, designing nutritional plans, cooking and preparing meals, running errands, maintaining the cleanliness of the home, managing medication intake, and ensuring the home is safe and secure for the patient.

Some important key differences between the two careers include a few of the skills necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of each. Some examples from health care assistant resumes include skills like "customer service," "healthcare," "patient appointments," and "direct patient care," whereas a home health aid is more likely to list skills in "companionship," "patient care," "hha," and "in-home care. "

Patient care associates typically work at different healthcare settings where their primary job is to provide basic patient needs and comfort. They are also responsible for several patient care tasks, including bathing patients, changing the pillows and bedsheets of patients, and serving patients' meals. They should comply with safety protocols when performing these tasks. Some of them can give patients medication depending on the level of their training. To become a patient care specialist, one should possess several skills, such as good communication.

Even though a few skill sets overlap between health care assistants and care associates, there are some differences that are important to note. For one, a health care assistant might have more use for skills like "healthcare," "patient appointments," "ehr," and "ekg." Meanwhile, some responsibilities of care associates require skills like "pca," "medical terminology," "infection control," and "patient safety. "