Health Care Assistants: a remarkable experience from Upper Egypt.

[Amira El Baqary]

Health care assistant (HCA) is a recognized career among different countries including many countries in Europe and America. The core responsibilities of HCA focus on providing care and assistants for patients at different health facilities and elderly homes. Assisting with hygiene, feeding, dressing and transferring patients are very common tasks. HCA carry out many tasks that facilitate a nurses' work and decrease the workload of nurses. HCA training programs started to take place in Egypt and are funded by NGOs. This article is a reflection from the last HCA training program that took place in Luxor.

6 months earlier no one expected that learners within the HCA program in Luxor would be engaged in serving community health and change the culture of care in such a short period of time. The students who were aged between 20 and 35 came from different backgrounds to be enrolled in a funded program from an NGO that aims to create new jobs in Luxor. The NGO responded to the crucial need of creating new jobs in Luxor beside the hospitals call to decrease the workload of the nurses who are loaded with huge non nursing responsibilities. To solve the situation, a consultancy service in the field of health care was called to provide solutions. One of the suggested solutions was creating a new career that is the HCA. The double advantage of the HCA program is that it's an initiative to train people and create jobs for them while decreasing the workload of nurses since an HCA is responsible for carrying out many tasks and facilitating nurses with their work.

600 applicants applied to study in the program while only 150 were required. The number not only reflects the need to find jobs or even the will to study something new such as health care, but also reflects the empowerment that all these wonderful young people have and the desire to learn and work. The program focused on caring, patient safety, first aid, infection control, health education and awareness and diverse technical and nontechnical skills as well.

Many students within the HCA program were working full-time beside their study and had different responsibilities. However, he students took their Education process to an unexpected level when they started to plan for community service projects as part of their learning activities. Many students worked cooperatively to develop an awareness campaign about each health topic they studied within the course, for example hepatitis, high blood pressure, diabetes and children's health. The more they received positive feedback about their work during the classes they ran in their villages, the more they became motivated to transfer knowledge to a wider community in Luxor. Health awareness sessions were prepared with the supervision and help from many doctors within the HCA teaching team and from Luxor international hospital as well. It was amazing to see the students, who came to study for only 6 months training, responding to every feedback they received to develop their health awareness materials and flyers and to continue this work on a voluntary basis, even after they completed the training. Another group within the HCA students surveyed the need for wheel chairs in their villages and were successful in raising funds to buy wheelchairs and supporting orphans in several villages. Another group started volunteer work at Luxor hospital and became a core team for care and infection control at the hospital.

During my work I witnessed many situations where trained HCA can make a difference in the quality of care when they work in home care or at hospitals. HCA is one of the cornerstone jobs among the health care system worldwide. This job is also widely present at many hospitals in Egypt, yet a structured job description for this career is still lacking in Egypt. Also, graduates of the program face different challenges such as the lack of recognition for HCA as a title within the hospitals jobs in Egypt. There is still no syndicate for health care assistants although the program has been running for more than 4 years now, and there is resistance from many places to hire them due to financial constraints among hospitals. I was lucky to work in the first health care assistants training program where professional structured curriculum was developed and to witness the change in students and their ability to learn, work and influence health care positively. Still, there is a long road to go for solving the complex situation of HCA graduates in Egypt.

Dr Amira El Baqary

PhD, MSc, Nursing Education

Nursing Training Manager, Phoenix IHSCS

E-mail: [email protected]