The Role of the Carer in a Health Care Settings

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The Role of the Carer in Health Care Settings

The role of a health care worker is to provide a safe environment for clients while meeting their medical and emotional needs. Care assistants provide basic personal care, social care and emotional support to elderly people who need help with day-to-day tasks. Care assistants may work in hospitals, day centres and residential homes for the elderly. Carers must meet the holistic care needs of the client, including: physical, psychological, social, emotional and safety needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation and personality developed by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970). Maslow's hierarchy (1954) explains human behaviour in terms of basic requirements for survival and growth. The needs hierarchy provides a useful framework for understanding clients, and this framework has been incorporated into several important theories of medical and nursing care.

The most basic physical requirements, such as food, water, or oxygen, constitute the lowest level of the need hierarchy. These needs must be satisfied before other, higher needs become important to individuals. When these needs are unmet, human beings will focus on satisfying them and will ignore higher needs. Responsibility of the carer to meet the physical needs: assisting residents with their hygiene needs, pressure area care, helping at meal times ensure dietary needs are adhered to, the mobilisation of client, recording care plans, reporting to nursing staff any complaints from client, care of the unconscious and incontinent clients, preparing clients for therapy or medical treatment.

Social needs include needs for belonging, love, and affection. Relationships such as friendships, romantic attachments, and families help fulfil this need for companionship and acceptance, as does involvement in social, community, or religious groups.
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