Home Health Aide: Job Description, Duties, Salary and More

If you’re looking for a career in which you can use your skills as a helpful person whose full of compassion, becoming a home health aide may be exactly the position you’re looking for. This career path is for those who love people, want to help others with challenges, and want to make a difference in the world.

The path for home health aides is opening up wider. The job base is expected to increase significantly, by nearly 50%, within the next decade, meaning there will be more jobs than ever available in this field.

But what exactly is a home health aide, and what do they do?

Let’s take a look at this question, and things like a home health aide job description and salary, to help you determine if this is the right career path for you.

Home Health Aide Job Description

If you’re looking for a career in which you can use your skills as a helpful person whose full of compassion, becoming a home health aide may be exactly the position you’re looking for. This career path is for those who love people, want to help others with challenges, and want to make a difference in the world.

The path for home health aides is opening up wider. The job base is expected to increase significantly, by nearly 50%, within the next decade, meaning there will be more jobs than ever available in this field.

But what exactly is a home health aide, and what do they do?

Let’s take a look at this question, and things like a home health aide job description and salary, to help you determine if this is the right career path for you.

What is a Home Health Aide?

Nurse measuring the blood pressure of senior man at home. Smiling at each other.

Home health aides and personal care aides may be hired by a company or family to work with a client who has chronic illnesses, cognitive impairment, disabilities, elderly folks with infirmities, or people with other medical condition which causes the need for assistance in the home on a regular basis. They may work with patients in hospice care, as well.

Sometimes, these home care workers may give medications, check a patient’s vital signs, or other similar tasks. This can only be done in certain states. They must always be overseen by a nurse or other qualified and licensed healthcare practitioner.

Home health aides and personal care aides help people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or cognitive impairment by assisting in their daily living activities. They often help older adults who need assistance. In some states, home health aides may be able to give a client medication. They also check the client’s vital signs under the direction of a nurse or other healthcare practitioner.

Other Job Titles for Home Health Aides

As you do your job search, you may discover any of the following job titles, which typically all refer to this same position:

• Home health aide
• Senior home health aide
• Caregiver
• Nursing assistant – CNA certification required

Duties and Responsibilities of a Home Health Aide

The basic duties and responsibilities of a home health aide will include things like:

• Work closely with healthcare professionals, such as nurses or hospice care doctors, to aid clients in personal tasks and simple health duties
• Keep a record of patients’ progress for alerting medical care professionals of changes
• Assist patients with basic tasks, such as walking, getting meals together, getting dressed, et cetera
• Assist patients in performing physical therapy exercises
• Work with transportation professionals to ensure patients have safe transportation, as necessary
• Engage in conversation with patients, and help them to feel cared for personally and professionally
• Light housework and laundry services for patients
• Shopping for groceries and other household supplies
• Running other errands for or with patients who cannot run them on their own
• Teaching the use of a cane, walker, or in some cases a wheelchair, or personal hygiene or health equipment or techniques
• Teach family members to appropriate care through ways of lifting, turning, or repositioning the patient
• Advise family members of nutritional instructions, personal care, cleaning, or household care for the patient
• Maintain a safe, secure environment with confidentiality

What Does a Home Health Aide Not Do?

It’s important to note some of the things that a home health aide job description does not include. For example, a home health worker is not a physician. Its is not a nurse, and does not have the same kind of authority for decision making on healthcare provision.

Home health workers are also not permitted to give out medication, do wound dressing changes, and other medical tasks without special certification and supervision by a healthcare professional. They are not nurses unless they have been certified and licensed appropriately.

Qualifications for Home Health Aides

The qualifications for home health aides vary from company to company, but some of them will look like these:

• A given number of years’ prior experience in the field. Though some companies will hire and train new home health aides
• Current and valid certifications – HHA or CNA
• Ability to lift up to 50 pounds – some will require more, depending on the types of clients they work with
• Exceptional patient service skills
• Ability to work some weekends, holidays, and evenings
• Ability to keep a safe, effective environment for working with patients
• Ability to promote health and maintenance to clients
• Health care administration
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong listening skills
• Dependability
• Emotional control
• Medical teamwork

Education and Training for Home Health Aides

Most companies require a minimum of a high school diploma or G.E.D. for their home health care staff. And many, if not most, states require home health aides to have regulated certifications. They have been approved by the state to ensure that the healthcare being provided is up to health and industry standards.

The positions that require certification are typically those who receive Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement. Therefore must meet higher compliance standards that other companies. Even if you do not wish to work with one of these companies, certification is still advisable for liability issues, as well as stronger hire-ability for you.

It is advisable that you look up your own state’s standards and laws regarding these certifications and licenses, to make sure that you understand the length and depth of programs you may be required to engage in.

Most companies and agencies will also provide short-term, on-the-job training with their standards of care learned on the way. Procedures and policies will typically be covered by handbooks. It may be covered verbally as well, during the on-the-job training sessions in the probation or training period provided by the company.

Where Can Home Health Aides Work?

Home health aides may work for companies and agencies who provide the proper training, meet regulations of their state, and find the clients. These agencies may be large corporations with a massive national hub or maybe a smaller, more personalized business run by locals.

Some home care aides work in residential care facilities, as well.

Or, if you have the fortitude, training, and business acumen, you can work on your own through a small business license in your own area and take on clients yourself.

Some home health care personnel work with a single client who has a high demand for physical care. While other aides may have several clients that they work with throughout the week, or even a few each day.

Salary of a Home Health Aide

The typical median salary for a home health aide is $37,196 per year in the United States. The lower end of salaries is $23,000, and the high end is $38,000. That’s a fairly average wage across the board, and could be considered low-end to moderate, depending on your standard of living.

This salary indicates that the position earns a percentage higher than the highest statewide minimum wage jobs. In cases higher than most of the highest city-implemented minimum wage, such as Chicago, whose minimum wage is $15.96 per hour.

The wages for a home health aide are higher in locations where the minimum wage is higher, and where economics demand a higher pay for other reasons. The type of company or practice for which you work will also determine your hourly wage or salary compensation.

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Finding the Right Position as a Home Health Aide

Picture of a kind nurse helping elderly man to stand up. Before you sign any contracts, sign up for certification programs, or anything else related to signing on as a caregiver, be sure to thoroughly read and contemplate the specific home health aide that you’re fulfilling in your position. Some caregiver positions are more suitable to one person than another because of physical demands, or specific care instructions required.

Once you have found an agency or care facility you wish to work for, get your certifications together, as necessary or any other training or assessments they require and commit to the work. You’ll find yourself working for many years in this field, if you so choose. You will also meet a great number of wonderful people who need the help that you so happily provide.

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