My Life as a Home Health Aide

I've been working a home health aide job for over a year, but everybody always asks me what I do. So I figured I'd blog about it. :-) I drive from house to house. In the morning, there's clients to assist getting up, dressed and fed. Mid-morning, there's an occasional client who needs help with a shower, or some exercise. Noon, there's lunch. 5-6pm, supper. And then there's bedtime clients, who start anywhere from 8-11pm or even 12am. I learned how to adapt to new environments, how to work with any client at their comfort level and how to be creatively efficient with my tasks. Management was great, for the most part. A couple case managers were wound a little tight, but nearly all of them were friendly, helpful and intelligent about how they handled their clients, aides and job. I didn't see too much of the other aides on the teams I was on. The ones I did run into were friendly enough and willing to assist in any way they could. It's not really a field of work to be in for the company of co-workers. The hardest part of the job was probably the time crunch of going to back-to-back visits. Some days were just really busy and even though the company allowed you x-so many minutes for drive-time, it still wasn't enough to make up for visits that went longer than planned, or getting lost on the way to a new client. The office would schedule you 8-9 @ "Bob's", 9-10 @ "Smith's", and 10-11 @ "Jone's". You were allowed 15 minutes tardiness (which also went for arriving early) before you would need to let the office know that they needed to call your client, "Smith" and inform them you would be running a little later than 9 that morning. The best part of the job was two-pronged: The independence and the people. The office gives out schedules each week based on the availability I have submitted for the whole month. So it's a little like playing Russian Roulette as far as each individual week in concerned. But as long as I pull my load and pick up a few extra visits they ask me for, they are usually very obliging for giving me visits and even days off. Scheduling aside, I get to care for clients the way they want to be cared for, and the way I feel comfortable doing it. There are no nurses or supervisors breathing down my neck, which is pretty great! The people are wonderful, and I inevitably formed strong friendships with quite a few of my clients! It's a hard job to leave, because of the dependence your clients have on you and the bond you have through caring for them and spending time with them. I had several clients who specifically requested me for their visits because of that bond of trust and friendship. Each home health agency is a little bit different and some pay for mileage instead of paying for drive-time for back-to-back visits. Some of them don't focus on skilled nursing or client cares as much as adult day care and companionship. They usually runs 3-hr visits and longer days as opposed to 1-2 hr visits filled with dressing, transferring, showering, feeding or exercising and more frequent visits per day.