Caregivers make a real difference within the lives of their patients and their families—but not everyone seems to be cut out for the task. Caregivers must master a full list of qualities and skills to achieve success and supply the most effective client care possible.
Discover 11 unique skills you wish to become a caregiver below.
Compassion
Showing compassion means having the ability to tune up to other people’s distress and feeling a desire to alleviate it. This attribute is first on the list because many home health clients are in distressing and even painful situations (recovering from surgery, losing their memory to Alzheimer’s, etc.). As a result, being caring and empathetic is an absolute must-have in terms of qualities for caregivers. Compassion might not be a “hard” skill the way clinical know-how or time management is, but it’s no less vital to caregiver work.
Communication
Caregivers must have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. whether or not your client isn’t ready to communicate through the standard means of speaking and writing, you’ll have to interact with their members of the family or other caretakers to debate their care and updates to their condition. You’ll likely also have to interact with doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, and possibly relay their instructions back to the patient and/or family also.
Observation
It’s not merely enough to speak with or perhaps hear your patients. Sometimes, they will not be ready to articulate what’s happening with their health, or they will even attempt to actively hide something from you if they’re petrified of revealing any deterioration in their condition. During your home visits and other interactions, you’ll have to keep a pointy eye out for any changes in your patient’s condition and make a note of them in your report. Staying awake to the client’s environment is additionally important because you’ll want to require care of potential hazards for tripping, fire, etc.
Interpersonal Skills
Working as a caregiver could be a very social job, and you’ll be interacting with people all day. You don’t must be an extrovert to figure as a caregiver, but it certainly does help. Having a high level of social skills will go a protracted way towards helping you determine rapport, build trust, and otherwise nurture a robust, open relationship along with your clients. These interpersonal skills will help not just you but your clients also, as many home health patients can feel isolated. Interacting with a caregiver can help dispel a number of those feelings of loneliness.
Time Management
Even if you’re employed for a caregiver agency, you’re largely your own boss when it involves managing it slow and ensuring that everything gets worn out a shift. As such, you’ll have to be ready to prioritise tasks, work efficiently, and avoid getting over-involved in overly time-consuming duties when time is brief.
Organization
Do you know where everything is in your nursing bag? What about important medications in your client’s house? Having an area for everything, and everything in its place—as the old saying goes—is vital for caregivers, especially within the unfortunate event of an emergency. When seconds count, you wish to be ready to lay your hands on exactly what you wish.
Cleanliness
Especially if the client is elderly, many caregivers aid with light housekeeping during their visits, like doing laundry or mopping. (Heavy-duty tasks like moving furniture, cleaning carpets, or mowing the grass are outside the scope of labor though.) whether or not you don’t keep your house as neat as you wish to, you’ll have to be ready to clean your patient’s house until it’s clean. This standard also applies to non-public hygiene because you’ll likely have to help your client bathe and obtain dressed.
Patience
Most home health clients are coping with challenges of 1 style of another: significant mental and/or physical ailments, limited communication abilities, and more. Clients are also irrational or critical (or both), require cleanups after accidents, and otherwise cause some frustrating situations. Caregivers have to remain calm in these scenarios, so having a near-unflappable personality is actually important for successful patient care.
Flexibility
Because a patient’s condition can change from day to day, so can your work as a caregiver. No two shifts or home visits are identical, and caregivers have to have a versatile mindset so that they can handle these changes with grace. This flexibility also extends to the scheduling, as caregivers rarely work regular business hours (after all, patients aren’t confined to Monday through Friday, 9 to 5).
Initiative
Caregivers often work by themselves within the patient’s home. Obviously, they’ll have instructions from doctors and nurses to follow in terms of wound care, medications, etc. but non-medical care is different from other medical environments because you don’t have a doctor signing off on your every move. Therefore, caregivers have to be comfortable being proactive, making informed decisions, and taking action in an emergency.
Physical Strength & Stamina
Caregivers perform a range of physical tasks, from carrying groceries to vacuuming to lifting patients. irrespective of what they are doing, caregivers are often on their feet for long periods of your time, sometimes almost their entire shift, which is why wearing comfortable shoes is so important! Having a baseline level of physical strength and stamina is vital to maintaining your own health which of your clients.
Source: https://www.caringseniorservice.com/blog/unique-skills-to-become-a-caregiver
