Nursing Assistant

In today’s hospitals and extended care facilities, nurse assistants often have more contact with patients that other health care workers do because they perform almost all of the routine patient care.

The nurse assistant is often referred to as the nurse’s “eyes and ears” and help nurses by performing many common tasks:

-respond to patients’ calls and requests

- take patients to operating rooms and to examination rooms

- observing and recording patients’ conditions: monitoring temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration rates, etc

-clean rooms , make beds and serve meals

-give massages

-walk patients who need assistant

-help other medical staff by setting up equipment, storing and moving supplies

-observe patients’ physical, mental, and emotional conditions and report that information back to the nurse

-help patients feel comfortable and try to cheer up patients by being friendly

-change dirty sheets and empty bedpans

help patients with personal hygiene which include bathing, dressing, toileting, grooming and diapering patients

-provide care to patients by helping them get into and out of bed

In short, nurse assistants deliver much of the human-touch care that comforts a patient.

Nursing assistants employed in nursing homes are called geriatric aidesIn nursing homes, nurse assistants work with the same patients for many years and often build friendship with these patients.

Job opportunities for nursing assistants
Nursing assistants-men, women, retirees