Top skills for a Caregiver

• Life saving/First aid expertise: Professional caregivers are always found by the side of their patients. They need to have proficiency in life saving skills such as CPR and first aid. They should be able to recognize when the patient is undergoing a threatening emergency such as heart attack, chronic illness which requires adequacy and reliability in determining the symptoms. With the expertise in life and first aid skills, the caregivers will be able to cure their patients easily and effectively. Such proficiency can be gained either by undertaking training from a prestigious institute for Life Saving skills and First Aid Certification or work under a professional troop of doctors to learn how to determine the symptoms.
• Safe handling of client documentation: Since caregivers are responsible for managing the health of the patient. So, they should be able to document all the activities related to the health and well being of a patient. The right documentation works as a communication tool for the other doctors for their valuable guidance and also promotes patient safety and quality of care. When the documentation is complete, detailed, and accurate, it avoids ambiguity. So, caregivers should be good at handling client documentation along with their other practices. To gain knowledge of maintaining client documentation, either discuss with your experienced professionals or just undertake any training related to Online Clinical Documentation Training Course.
• Ability of behaviour redirection: Being a caregiver, this becomes one of the critical skills. The caregivers should have the ability to notice behavior or pattern of behaviours in their patients. Seeing this, they should be able to redirect their behaviour from unwanted ones. Redirecting behaviour helps in curing the patients from severe illness. You need to maintain a pleasant and composed tone to handle them and make them understand the importance of it. This strategy can be either gained with your years of experience or you can undertake courses related to it that promotes and helps in adapting to skills for behaviour redirection.
• Compassion towards families and patients: A caregiver is a person who is making daily activities easier for the person trying to get out of the injuries or illness. However, you require to be compassionate about your clients and you should be content by bringing smiles into their lives. Your positive attitude in treating them can help the patient overcome the disease effectively. Therefore, if the caregiver develops compassion and pretends to be confident, it further enables the patient to sync up well and develops belief that they can heal too. So, having compassion towards patients and their families during tough times can help to overcome those serious challenges.
• Strong eye for details: Caregivers are responsible for the overall health of the patient. Right from monitoring the symptoms to the final cure of the disease, they overlook every particular detail for the patients. With good observation skills, they can easily identify any change in pattern or behaviour, report any symptoms, curate a detailed treatment plan, and provide care tailored to their needs. By keeping a constant record of the vital signs, the caregiver can easily compare them with the previous one and convey the same to the doctor easily. This ability is conceived over the years of practice or through some regulated activities such as playing a memory game, recording and considering your observations, challenging yourself with a mental workout and many others.
• Attention and inspection: You need to pay attention to the everyday responsibilities and conditions of your clients. Sometimes patients are unable to express their difficulties or pain exactly or they are trying to conceal it to avoid the pain during the treatment. For instance, any bed-ridden patient with low blood pressure trying to hide the feeling of dizziness to avoid saline water. As a caregiver, you should examine the client’s condition, report the same to a doctor, and act upon his advice.
• Sanitation: You may need to do sanitation at the client’s home like mopping or sweeping even if you’re not performing it at your place. As a candid caregiver, it is important to keep the surroundings of your client neat and clean. This promotes your caring attitude towards patients and helps the patients to recover quickly.

Caregiver education and certifications

• High School Diploma or Equivalent

  Candidates applying for the caregiver job should have a High School Diploma or any other equivalent education. As a caregiver is a skill-based job, one can directly apply for this job without any degree or university graduation which is subject to the relevant skills. Other than this, the caregivers who are looking to work in a healthcare setting, need to have no less than 75 hours of training as a nursing assistant and should undertake competency exams to prove their eligibility.

• Certifications

  If you complete any certification program which helps you to develop relevant skills and knowledge, then it’s very beneficial for you to be competent. It is also helpful for your clients, as they are served by a certified and skilled person.
  
  Since a caregiver job is not for everyone, it’s for individuals who have the desire to help others in hard times. There are various types of certifications for caregivers which one can undertake based on their offering and scope.
  
  The Basic Caregiver Certification offered by many online companies such Caregiver’s list Basic Training for Caregivers or Care Core Certifications. This certification teaches you how to coordinate with your patients well and perform daily activities.
  
  Then, Certified Nursing Assistant Training which acts as a stepping stone to move towards caregivers career. There are various non-profit organizations offering these certifications such as American Red Cross Nurse Assistant Training or you can refer to a Registered Nursing organization where you can find the details of multiple states offering this training.
  
  Other than this is First Aid and Emergency Care, which should be undertaken by every caregiver as it teaches them the essentials of the care such as CPR, First Aid and other related. There are many organizations offering such courses such as American Heart Association offering such courses. Other than this, CPR Certification, First Aid Training, and many others are available.
  
  Then there are certifications for caregivers for special needs. Sometimes, caregivers are employed for a particular disease for which they should have a certification of it. This required more specialized care such as Dementia Care Certification, Diabetes Care Certification, and Parkinson’s Disease Care Certification.
  
  Other than this, there is An academy for Caregiving Excellence (ACE) is imparting an Assisted Living Caregiver Course which is an online self-paced training and certification program that helps to get a Caregiver job in the state of Arizona. During These 62 hours of training students get access to experienced instructors, helpful videos, and training in the essential skills. You can immediately start the course that provides 10 hours of in-person skills training along with the medication training.

Caregiver resume-writing tips

• Particulars of Experience: It is the best practice to give particulars of experience which is relevant to the job post or asked by an employer. Always write down your experience in bullet points. To get a clear idea to the potential recruiter regarding your experience, provide relevant illustrations. For instance, you worked as a caregiver for one year of a patient who was 65 years old and was suffering from Alzheimer.
• Quantify your accomplishments: Avoid using buzzwords and mention your accomplishments with relevant facts and figures. It helps an employer to know about your ability to handle any urgent situation or job stress. Hence, instead of saying that you worked as a caregiver earlier for the client suffering from paralysis, mention that you worked as a caregiver for a year to serve the 65-year-old patient suffering from paralysis. After considering your sincere efforts and significant improvements in the patient due to the same, his relatives gave you a 20% salary hike from the sixth month of joining.
• Bring clarity to your skills section: Incorporate all essential skills that are demanded by the employer. It grabs the attention of a potential recruiter and increases your probability of getting the job. While mentioning the skills, make sure that you added a summary regarding every skill. For example, don’t say that you have the ability of attention and inspection. Instead, mention that you’re able to pay consistent attention to the mental and physical behavior of your client and inspect the decline in the health graph if any.
• Include other segments related to the caregiver position: Adding hobbies and interests in the ‘Other’ segment of your resume makes it unprofessional. To make the best use of that segment, you need to include something that signifies your additional skills to efficiently work as a caregiver. For example, mention that you did a Naturopathy course that helps to amplify the self-healing ability of the human body.

Looking for Cover Letter ideas? See our sample for Professional Caregiver cover letter.