How to Hire a Nursing Assistant

Nursing Assistant: What is the cost of hiring?

What is a nursing assistant?

A nursing assistant, also called a nursing support worker, assists nurses as well as other healthcare and medical staff in the care of patients in healthcare and residential care settings, such as hospitals, GP practices and aged care homes.

Nursing assistants may undertake basic nursing tasks, such as monitoring a patient for changes in their physical or mental health, helping them with their mobility, assisting them with rehabilitation exercises, or helping them with personal hygiene and grooming.

Nursing assistants may also provide social and emotional support, such as taking the time to have a chat or taking part in recreational activities with them.

Why hire a nursing assistant?

A nursing assistant undertakes basic nursing tasks, which may enable your enrolled and/or registered nurses to dedicate more of their time to higher-level duties.
With their close oversight of patients, nursing assistants may be able to address physical or mental problems more quickly, improving overall patient care.
As the duties of nursing assistants include helping patients with everyday lifestyle activities, their quality of life is improved, which also improves patient satisfaction and your reputation as a healthcare provider.

Contributions of a great nursing assistant:

• provide compassionate and nurturing healthcare assistance to patients
• assist the patient with daily lifestyle activities to maintain quality of life and personal dignity
• work and collaborate with a team of healthcare professionals to provide optimum patient care.

Defining your hiring needs for a nursing assistant

A nursing assistant can be a useful addition to your business when the workload of your nursing workforce becomes too great for them to be able to complete all the tasks required for each patient.

For example, nurses may not have time to help patients shower as well as change their dressings if they are to attend to all the nursing needs of all their patients during their shift.

A nursing assistant can help shower the patient before a nurse attends to them.

Because of their lower level of qualifications, the average remuneration for a nursing assistant is lower than for an enrolled or registered nurse, providing an economical option when hiring for this kind of work.

What are the types of nursing assistants?

A nursing assistant may choose to specialise or focus on a particular area of healthcare, such as community health, residential aged care, or hospital care. However, their skills are transferable, so prior experience in one specialisation area does not prevent them from being able to change and perform tasks in another.

When writing your nursing assistant job description, consider including some or all of the following keywords to improve the visibility of your job posting. These are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on nursing assistant jobs, according to Indeed data:

• assistant in nursing
• AIN
• nursing assistant
• assistant nursing
• nurse
• 457 visa sponsorship, assistant nurse
• registered nurse
• aged care AIN dama visa sponsorship

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Where to find a nursing assistant

To find the right nursing assistant for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

• Approach training providers: Students undertaking nursing studies may be looking for relevant part-time work while studying and have already obtained the minimum skills required for your role.
• Ask for staff referrals: Your existing employees may know of quality candidates in their networks who are interested in a nursing assistant role or are seeking industry experience.
• Engage a recruiter: Labour hire companies have talent pools they can draw on to find a suitable candidate for your role.
• Start a work experience program: As a longer-term recruitment strategy, offer placements to students who require it as part of their course and may then be interested in continuing their career with your organisation.
• Post your job online: Try posting your nursing assistant job on Indeed to find and attract quality candidates.

Skills to look for in a nursing assistant

A successful nursing assistant candidate will typically have the following skills and competencies, which may be gained through a variety of experiences, training or education:

• basic medical knowledge, such as infection control and records management
• attention to detail and ability to follow instructions
• empathy and interpersonal skills
• teamwork and collaboration skills
• patient care assistance training, such as a Certificate III in Individual Support or Health Care Assistance
• provide first aid certificate.

Writing a nursing assistant job description

Now that you know the key skills, salary expectations, popular job seeker search terms and hiring insights for a nursing assistant, you’re ready to write a job description.

A nursing assistant job description typically includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities, and the required and preferred skills for the position. You may also want to include information about your company culture, benefits and perks to attract candidates to your vacant role.

Ready to get started? See our full guide for writing nursing assistant job descriptions.

Interviewing nursing assistant candidates

Strong candidates for nursing assistant positions will be confident answering questions regarding:

• interest or experience in providing patient care
• techniques in patient care, such as showering or feeding patients
• ability and experience in working in a team
• situational questions demonstrating key skills such as empathy and communication
• behavioural questions as to how they would tackle challenging situations.

Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of nursing assistant interview questions for examples (with sample answers).