Home care healthcare professional hugging senior patient

Duration: 6 weeks

Application Fee: 80

Tuition Fee $1200(Tax and Application fee included)

Tax: 120

The Personal Support Worker (PSW) course is a comprehensive program designed to equip individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to provide compassionate care and support to individuals who require assistance with their daily living activities. Through a combination of theoretical learning and practical training, students will gain proficiency in areas such as personal hygiene assistance, medication management, meal preparation, and emotional support techniques. This course emphasizes the importance of respecting clients’ autonomy, maintaining dignity, and fostering a safe and supportive environment. Graduates of the PSW course will be prepared to pursue fulfilling careers in various healthcare settings, including long-term care facilities, hospitals, and community care organizations, where they play a crucial role in enhancing the quality of life for those in need of care and support.

PSW (Personal Support Worker) care is an essential component of healthcare systems worldwide, particularly in settings such as long-term care facilities, hospitals, and home care. Here are several points supporting the importance of PSW care.

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) play a crucial role in providing direct care to individuals who need assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs). These activities include:

Bathing: Helping individuals bathe safely and maintain personal hygiene.
Dressing: Assisting with selecting appropriate clothing and dressing.
Grooming: Helping with tasks like hair brushing, shaving, and oral care.
Toileting: Providing assistance with using the toilet, maintaining continence, and ensuring cleanliness.
Mobility: Helping individuals move safely, whether it’s transferring from bed to chair, walking, or using mobility aids. 

Emotional Support:

Beyond physical care, PSWs offer emotional support to their clients. They often develop close relationships with those they care for, providing companionship, empathy, and reassurance.

Absolutely, emotional support is a crucial aspect of the role of Personal Support Workers (PSWs). Beyond just attending to the physical needs of their clients, PSWs often become trusted companions who provide empathy, reassurance, and a listening ear.

Support Worker Responsibilities

A support worker’s general responsibilities, depending on the jurisdiction in which they work, can be grouped into six categories:

  1. personal care
  2. support for nurses and other health care providers
  3. family support
  4. social support
  5. housekeeping or home management
  6. documenting and reporting any basic assessments, observations, and care provided in the client’s record or chart.

Support workers must understand what to do, what not to do, and the limit and extent of a health care worker’s role as determined by their province’s educational standards and employer’s policies in order to protect clients from harm. The term scope of practice is not a copyrighted term, and it is not intended only for regulated professionals. Instead, it is used to identify what a support worker may and may not do in relation to client care.

Never act beyond the legal limits of your role. Also, never perform a function or task that you have not been trained to do. If you perform a task that is outside these limits, you could harm a client and create serious legal problems for yourself and your employer.

The support worker’s scope of practice in any province, territory, city, or municipality is determined from three important sources. Those sources include the following:

1. Provincial/territorial educational standard

of practice: Many provinces now follow either the national or provincial program standards, which dictate what support workers need to be taught in their educational programs. The support worker educational program includes information on the scope of practice for sup- port work in that province or territory. Stu- dents will learn about the laws and the support worker’s professional responsibilities in their part of the country. Students should ask their instructors if they require any clarification.? an example of a scope of practice document for the province of Nova Scotia.)

2. Employer’s policies: Every employer has writ- ten policies that establish what can and cannot be done by support workers. These policies should be read carefully before starting work.

3. Supervisor: On the job, the supervisor is the best source of clarification of the employer’s policies. It is far better to ask for direction than risk harming a client, so never hesitate to ask questions or request clarification about any procedure.

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