What is a Healthcare Support Worker?
No matter what your experience, qualifications, or expertise, you could become a healthcare support worker with our Trust.
Healthcare support workers (HSW) work within our inpatient hospitals and play a major part in the delivery of care to people on our wards, with guidance from a variety of professionals. They often spend more time with people using our services than any other member of staff and as an HSW you will be challenged and rewarded as you help people throughout their recovery.
The day-to-day role:
- getting to know people who use services and their interests and needs
- talking to people who use services and carers and making them feel comfortable
- helping with personal care like washing, using the toilet and dressing
- serving meals and helping to feed people who need support
- monitoring people's conditions by taking temperature, pulse, respiration and weight
- working with other health and social care professionals to provide individual care and development plans
- helping people to move around if they need support
What are the entry requirements?
There are no set requirements to become a healthcare support worker with us. If you are caring and compassionate with the ability to engage people you may be who we are looking for.
We expect good literacy and numeracy and an NVQ level 2 in Health and Social Care is desirable but not essential. Experience of working as a paid, or unpaid carer is also beneficial.
You will need to:
- be able to relate to people from a wide variety of backgrounds
- have excellent communication skills, in particular communicating with tact and sensitivity
- have the ability to remain calm under pressure
- have good observational skills
- have good organisation skills
Our HSW roles will be suitable for you if you have a passion for supporting people in need of high-quality care and are looking for a busy and challenging environment to develop and establish effective working relationships.
Are there opportunities to progress?
Your training will include basic nursing skills and you'll work towards obtaining the Care Certificate. There are also opportunities to study for other qualifications such as the CACHE level 2 certificate in Healthcare Support Services or the CACHE level 2 or 3 diploma in Clinical Healthcare Support.
Some of our HSW's have been offered a secondment into a programme at university to become a qualified nurse. Others have been supported to undertake further study in the allied healthcare professions such as art therapy, dietetics, speech and language therapy and many more. It is also sometimes possible to join the Royal College of Nursing as a health practitioner member.