Becoming a Healthcare Assistant: One job, many roles

Thursday 25 August 2022

When Lindsay Farnham and Nikita Le Prevost originally became Healthcare Assistants, they had no idea which direction in healthcare they wanted to go in, which was part of the beauty of the job.

Health and Social Care (HSC) has recently launched its #FindYourFit campaign, a recruitment campaign seeking to highlight just how varied the sector is. Current vacancies include Healthcare Assistants, Social Workers, Carers, Occupational Therapists, Support Workers, Catering and Housekeeping staff and many other supporting roles that are essential to the service as a whole.

There are currently a wide range of Healthcare Assistant opportunities across adult mental health, services for older people, disability services, orthopedics and more. These roles are the perfect way to kickstart your career as you can choose the route that fits you best.   

To begin as a Healthcare Assistant requires no previous experience and allows you to train on the job to develop a career in nursing. Just like Lindsay and Nikita, who both trained as Healthcare Assistants and are now registered Nursing Associates, working in acute nursing.

“I originally worked on one of the wards as a Healthcare Assistant,” said Nikita. “I did my training with Lindsay, which was two years, and then I ended up moving to A&E – which is where I am now.

“It’s very different to the wards. What’s quite nice about the role is that you can move around, so once you’ve trained you can really go wherever.”

Acute nursing is one of several routes a Healthcare Assistant can take, focused more on immediate treatment after the sudden onset of illness. However, both Nikita and Lindsay have different roles to play.

“My job is very different to Lindsay’s: People come into A&E unwell, and we do basic assessments, get involved with the doctors, work out a plan of action – how we’re going to treat that patient - it’ll get to a point where they might need to be admitted, so we need to find a ward. Lindsay would then take over care on a ward.

“We get them well enough so they can be further looked after.”

Lindsay said: “We then admit the patient and get together a plan of care. We take care of them, give them the medications that are needed and obviously try and get them back to how they were before and get them home.”

Nikita said, because of the different development opportunities in the nursing profession “nursing is definitely where I want to be”.

“Some nursing associates work in theatres in the hospital, there are some working in mental health, learning disabilities; it’s one role across the healthcare board.”

Lindsay agreed: “I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”

HSC is holding a Recruitment Open Day on Saturday 24 September to give people a chance to meet some of the HSC teams and ask questions about finding a job within the service.  

“I originally went to an open day about eight years ago,” said Nikita, “as I didn’t know what I wanted to do as a career. 

“I went to an open day, got chatting to people and then applied to be a Healthcare Assistant.”

The open day is being held at Beau Sejour in the Cambridge and Delancy Rooms, between 11:30 and 18:00. 

If you’re interested in becoming a Healthcare Assistant you can head to (link/gov.gg/HCA) or (link/gov.gg/healthcare) for more information on wider job opportunities at HSC. 

“It’s a great job,” concluded Lindsay, “to be able to help patients, to be able to get them back to how they were.

“It’s such a lovely feeling.”

You can listen to the interview in full below:

Pictured top: Nikita (left) and Lindsay (right).