What Is The Difference Between A Healthcare Assistant And A Care Assistant?

It's easy to get confused between the terms 'healthcare assistant' and 'care assistant', but we've come up with a way to easily define the two. This will significantly improve your job search!

Knowing the difference between Healthcare Assistants and Care Assistants is extremely important when finding a job to tailor to your expertise. Read on to clarify the difference.

Although the terms ‘care assistant’ and ‘healthcare assistant’ are used interchangeably by people, we decided to have them as separate categories to try and create some differentiation between social care and clinical/hospital care roles.

The ‘Care assistant’ sector on Socialcare.co.uk is intended to be used for role that are community, care home or domiciliary.

Whilst the job title and description may use the term ‘healthcare assistant’ or ‘HCA’ to refer to the role, the difference in skills between a social care setting and a hospital or clinical setting is, in our opinion, too great to have all the jobs lumped in together in a single sector.

Consequently, we have a sector called ‘Healthcare assistant’ that is intended for hospital and clinical roles.

Healthcare assistants can be found in hospitals or GP surgeries. They can also be known as ‘healthcare support workers’ or ‘auxiliary nurses’, particularly when working in a hospital setting.

Typically, any care assistant or healthcare assistant role will require candidates to have a vocational qualification; NVQ or an equivalent.

QCF or NVQ Level 2 or 3 diplomas in Health and Social care or equivalent are a typical requirement for care assistants.

Whilst there is no formal requirement regarding qualifications for care assistant or HCA roles, it is common for care assistants and HCAs to undertake additional training whilst they are employed.

An employer will offer new employees the training required for them to be able to do the job, but vocational qualifications such as NVQs can be obtained during employment.

Makes sense now? Good! Now on to what you can do next to find healthcare assistant jobs -

Next Steps...

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