Working as an NHS neonatal/midwifery healthcare assistant

[colsy]

Have any of you in England changed careers to become a healthcare assistant in the NHS? (I think that's the right term these days - I know them as nursing assistants, but I think it's now HCA is it?) For a few years now (even before I had my own children), I've liked the idea of working in a neonatal unit. As I am 41, got 2 young children (who I want to be home for a lot), and can't afford to do another full-time university-based degree, I think aspiring to be an HCA rather than a fully qualified neonatal nurse is more appropriate for me.

Can any of you tell me what's involved in training as an HCA? Is it possible to go straight into neonatal or possibly even midwifery HCA-ing, or do you have to do general HCA-ing first?

Is all the training on the job, or would I have to go back to college?

Once you've worked some time as an HCA, is it possible to move up the career ladder to become a practitioner or even a fully trained nurse, or does that involve going right back to the start and doing a full degree?

Thanks for any help here. As you can probably tell, I am thinking aloud with my questions and still very much in the early days of thinking about all of this.

 

[Dinah93]

Hi, I can only tell you of my husband's experiences as he looked to become a HCA on the neonatal unit after our daughter's premature birth. The very short answer was that there isn't a neonatal unit within 50 miles of us that uses health care assistants, they are the only wards in the hospital that only use fully qualified staff. I don't know if this is a national regulation or just covers the northern group, easy way to find out would be to call your local hospital I guess.

After that he thought about being a HCA on pediatrics or emergency assessment, however he was told the hospital only hires HCAs who already have their level 2 or higher NVQ. You can't get a healthcare assistant NCQ in the classroom, it can only be done on the job, most commonly you get them working in care for the elderly, either in home or in a residential setting. So hubby worked weekends and evenings in a home and after 16 months he finally has his NVQ 2 and has gone full time as a senior carer and is about to start on his NVQ3. If you have a degree you won't struggle with the NVQ2 exams, they're done one by one, hubby actually found some of them fun rather than challenging! He has made the decision to stick with dementia care rather than to go into a hospital setting at this point as he loves what he is doing. Through his home they have offered him the option to train as a nurse, or to embark on the management training program, he's making the decision which way he wants to go.

As far as I'm aware it is only adult nursing and mental health nursing you can learn on the job, but it has to be employer provided/backed. There is one course on the OU that you can do with employer support, again this is something you could do as a HCA working in a care home for one of the larger organisations. However most nurses go to uni to train, and this remains necessary for childrens nursing. A qualified nurse can then chose to work up to being a nurse practitioner while on the job with employer support.

Did either of your children spend time on neonatal? I don't mean to be condescending if you've been through it (and if you have stop reading this paragraph as it will just come across as condescending but if you haven't I wanted to make you aware a tiny bit of what it's like in there), but neonatal is in no world like working on the post natal ward where you get to show mums how to bath the baby, breastfeed, take mums blood pressure and check how she's feeling. It's a massively interventionist system, most of the babies aren't handled except by mum and dad unless to do a procedure or change the nappy, preemie skin is hyper sensitive so handling really irritates them if they're very early. The babies born 34+ weeks might go straight to low dependency and have a more normal journey, just learning to feed, put on some weight etc, but early babies have a very different journey and I think the reason all staff on our neonatal wards were trained nurses is you never know when one of them are going to need emergency help. My son was 7 weeks old, 36 gestational, in low dependency for a few weeks, then for no apparent reason he dropped his sats down to 5%, went grey, but heart was still beating and he was shallow breathing, a nurse had the confidence to try to assess what was up and start treatment in the few minutes it took for a doctor to get there, if it had been a HCA feeding the baby in the next cot when I screamed for help I'm not sure the outcome would have been the same. I found it very upsetting being on neonatal the first time around, seeing all those lines of babies on ventilators, the constant tweaking of computers to monitor them, medication every hour, the infernal beeping of the sats monitors, coming in on a morning and finding the baby next to my son had moved from low dependency as a feeder grower back to intensive care and was now on 5 machines to keep him alive, the morning I came in early to care for my daughter and saw them try and fail to resuscitate the baby of the lady I'd befriended, and how upset some of the nurses were afterwards who had been looking after him that day. Don't get me wrong, neonatal nursing is a wonderful thing to do, and I think it's brilliant you'd like to work on the unit, but if you haven't spent time going through the process with a child I would very strongly suggest you call your local hospital, explain you're thinking of retraining and ask if there is a nurse who could show you around and maybe talk to you a bit about the job. I have nurse friends all of whom have said they did their few weeks on neonatal and ran as fast as they could to other wards, emotionally it's a massive burden to take on.

Don't take my word as gospel, but it is a field hubby has worked hard to get into for the last 2 years so I can only tell you what we've been finding out. Hope that helps x

 

[Jembug]

Hello, there are loads of jobs if you look on nhs website.
If your 'un-qualified' then you would be classed as a Health care assistant and these role do exist in Maternity and SCBU/NiCO

I'm currently a community children's support worker and I look after children with tracheostomy's in there own home (NHS)
I have been trained on the job, pretty intense but now totally competent to look complex children on Ventilators.

I am a trained Nursery Nurse and earlier this year I applied and was successful in getting a job working in SCBU but didn't take role due to circumstances.
I think having a baby in SCBU is the most scariest thing I have ever experienced and yes all the alarms are frightening to a mum/dad.
But now I'm trained up on all the alarms it's so daunting and of course you have to pass competencies before you can carry out certain tasks.

I've just completed my level 3 Health care via NHS which they normally offer to all healthcare positions I think?

All I recommend is if you see a job you think you like then go for a visit on the ward get your face seen.
Try nhs professionals too.
Goodluck

 

[Caite]

Hi

I know this thread is a few months old, but thought I'd share with you.

I completed my midwifery training last year, and during my training, I spent some time on placement on the neonatal unit. I obviously came at it from an entirely different perspective, having worked as a nurse for a few years beforehand and not having any children myself.

I really enjoyed my placement on the neonatal unit. I had worked in a similar environment previously with adults, so the medications (which as student midwives we weren't allowed to give), the procedures and the monitors and machines were all quite normal to me.

They had a couple of 'un-trained' staff working there - most of them were nursery nurses, but there was one or two HCAs working there. They didn't work with the babies receiving intensive care, but worked with the babies who were almost ready to go home, who were no longer (usually) being constantly monitored, and who were, pretty much, being treated like any other baby - being bottle fed (either formula or expressed) and who were about the size of an average newborn.

I'm not sure what previous experience the HCAs had, I'm afraid.

On the maternity wards, there were HCAs, and they would be trained up on the ward/by the hospital - the usual stuff such as manual handling, basic life support etc, but also had specific competencies which had to be signed off, such as supporting women to breast feed, use the breast pumps, or taking a baby's temperature. Again, I'm not too sure what experience they had, but I think there were some who had no prior experience.

If it is something you are really interested in, you could always join the hospital bank and get some experience on the adult wards, which would make your application look even better when you do find a post.

You would start off as a band 2 HCA but there would be the possibility of progressing to more senior HCAs posts. From what I am aware, that is achieved by doing your NVQ 3. You cannot 'work up' to being a qualified nurse, regardless of how many years of experience you have as an HCA.

Some Trusts do offer secondments. They will continue paying you your HCA salary whilst you attend university to train as a nurse. No nurse training is on the job - all nurses must attend university and study at degree level. The course is roughly 50% uni and 50% placement, and you must complete both the academic and the clinical side of the course to qualify.

If you aren't seconded, there are other options. These have changed since I was a student nurse, but there is definitely a bursary (I'm not sure how much it is now), and then I think you can also top this up with a student loan(?) - I did my degree in Wales and started in 2005 so we only got the full bursary (about £6000 a year - we weren't entitled to a student loan). There are also no tuition fees as it is all paid for by the NHS.

There are 4 branches - adult, child, mental health and learning disability. I personally feel that adult is the best route as there are so many more options afterwards, including retraining as a midwife/health visitor etc, which other branches cannot do.