Home Health Aide Resume: Tips And Guidelines To Get A Job Supporting Patients

A home health aide resume has a lot of weight. You are asking family members to entrust you with their vulnerable loved one. This person in need will spend all their time with you and start viewing you as a friend or even another family member.

Thus, your home health aide resume should prove that you are up to this sensitive and crucial task. Your personality and attitude towards other will influence your career just as much as your degrees or skills.

This guide will help you let your dependability and compassion shine through your resume and reach elderly clients who need you in their life. So, keep reading and use this information to make the best home health aide resume.

How To Write A Home Health Aide Resume

Your home health aide resume will find you chances at the best home health aide jobs if you just create it correctly. Making the perfect resume is an art, and beginners often struggle to know where to start. Experienced home health aides also stumble and feel overwhelmed by latest resume trends.

So, if you are struggling to start, the first thing you can try is making a list of things that you can do. These can be your innate and learned home health aide skills or just activities you've learned to do in your courses or at home. They must be related to your home health aide resume.

This list of abilities will serve as the backbone of your home health aide resume. Highlight the acquired skills under their relevant workplace in your education section.

Highlight the education that gave you this practical knowledge. Finally, use all this information to write a succinct home health aide resume header.

Layout

The best home health aide resume is within one page. Though this space is short, it helps you highlight the best of your achievements and qualifying skills with zero clutter or fluff.

Use simple fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, or Calibri in your resume. However, it's best not to use them all at once. Try and stick to one font and color throughout your home health aide resume. It's not a poster, and its job is to be straightforward and professional.

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Tip: The background of your home health aide resume should be pure white. If you want to make it easy on the eyes, you can make it a little beige or off white, but not enough to look too flashy.

Your home health aide resume text should be black in color. Personal care aides can add some pops of blue, but keep it to a minimum.

Bold small phrases and keywords that you consider important. They'll catch the recruiter's eye and push your best qualities to the forefront.

The Best Resume Format For A Home Health Aide

Resumes come in three major arrangement types. These choices can confuse you if you're not familiar with them. To help you out, here's a guide to each type and where to use it.

• Chronological Resume: It mentions your experience and qualifications in order of newest to least recent. It's helpful for highlighting your valuable experience.
• Focused Resume: It gives more focus to your education and skills. This is ideal for freshers or career changers. You can go in-depth into what you learned in a course and how it will help you perform your duties.
• Combination Resume: Mixes and matches the above two formats to highlight only the best experience and education. Best for hard workers who have a strong arsenal of coursework and previous home health aide jobs under their belt.

Skills

Let's go through some of the most crucial home health aide skills and how you'll apply them in your daily living and work.

Caretaking

• Helping your patient maintain personal hygiene.
• Helping them adopt a new dietary plan as per their condition and preferences.
• Taking your patient outside for enriching activities such as morning walks or a trip to the nearby park.
• Respectfully aiding your patient in using the toilet and making them feel comfortable.
• Providing support when the patient climbs into or gets up from their bed or wheelchair.
• Guiding the patient when they visit they go out for trips with family members or have medical appointments.

Housekeeping

• Domestic and household tasks like keeping the patient's room, bed, appliances, etc. clean and sanitized.
• Doing their laundry by following the proper safety measures, like bedsore prevention.
• Cooking daily living meals for your patient.
• Ensuring the furniture is arranged properly with no chances of collisions or accidents.
• Organizing the patient's personal space and keep their room proper and cheerful.
• Cleaning up the table or desk after they have finished eating.

Basic Medical Knowledge

• Administering medication to the patient and keeping track of the correct amounts, labels, and times.
• Providing first aid in case of injuries.
• Smoothly performing injections if necessary, for example, insulin for diabetes patients or epinephrine for nut allergies.
• Putting together a nutritious meal plan by interpreting the prescription.
• Collecting good bodily fluid or discharge samples for medical tests.
• Knowing the best and safest exercise routines for patients of all ages and mobility types.
• Measuring and keeping track of vital signs like blood pressure, blood glucose level, pulse rate, etc.
• Have thorough knowledge of health insurance, comparable to that of an insurance agent.

Friendliness and Patience

• Acting not only as a caretaker but also a companion for lonely patients.
• Gently guiding them through lifestyle changes and personal hygiene routines.
• Maintaining a jovial and approachable attitude when interacting with patients. You'll gain these skills from customer service.
• Making the dependent patient feel like they are respected and valued.
• De-escalating stressful scenarios and understanding your patient's complaints or grievances.
• Becoming almost like a new family member for your patient.

Education

A professional medical degree is not required for this job description. However, you do need to have a few relevant qualifications when you start writing your home health aide resume.

If you're planning to work in a certain state after graduation, look into the specific requirements of that state.

Your health aide opportunities also improve when you acquire widely recognized certifications. A CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) credential is perfect for your home health aid role. It'll boost your resume and add more credibility to your profile.

The program to get a CNA combines theoretical knowledge of medicines, exercises, etc. with practical skills like drug administration and testing vital signs. These programs usually last one or two years, and maybe even longer.

Experience

Medical fields like this need equal weight on the education and experience. Thus, in addition to your courses and certificates, your home health aide resume should also have a strong education section.

Always list your experience in the reverse chronological order.

The section should be formatted like this:

• First, write the name of the home health aide organization or medical institute where you worked most recently.
• Below that, mention your designation. Example: Home Health Aide or Nursing Assistant
• Now, note down the years if you worked there as a certified home health aide. If you worked less than a year, mention the month you joined and the month you resigned.
• Make some short, concise bullet points detailing what you accomplished at this home health aide job. Numbers are more tangible than simply stating what you did.
• Start another similar section for your previous job description.

For your reference, here is the GOOD way to describe your experience.

It's also crucial to know what you should avoid. So, below is an example of a BAD experience write-up.

Start A Triumphant Home Health Aide Career

Being a home health aide is an exciting career prospect. With more and more people providing better support for their family members, the job is growing at a rate of 25%. This growth is much faster than that of the broader job market. So, it can be a viable and beneficial path for you.

Home health aides can join a particular organization that helps them find a patient. These organizations specialize and providing home health aides. Thus, they hire only the best of the best with equally high standards for employee benefits.

You can also work under a registered doctor or nurse and care for their specific patients. This gives you an opportunity to receive mentorship and invaluable counsel from a medical professional.

Once home health aides gain a years of experience and strong credibility, they can brand themselves as an independent contractor or start an entrepreneurship. However, the medical standards and regulations will always need adhering to.

When it comes to the salary, most fresher home health aides earn around $24,000 annually. 💸 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average home health aides earn $14.15 per hour, which amounts to $29,430 per year. As you gain extra professional skills, you can earn up to about $30,000 in a year.

After gaining a decade or so of experience, you can take administrative roles in health aide institutions. Get started with this director resume guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best additional qualifications for a home health aide resume?

Home health aides will benefit from having additional certification or training for providing CPR, practicing medically accurate therapy, and managing health insurance documents. If you have previous experience with housekeeping services (eg. at a hotel or resort), mention that as well.

Are home health aides only for senior citizen patients?

While most home health aides choose to work with senior citizens, there is no actual restriction. You can improve the lives of people of all ages. They may be affected by physical and mental disabilities or alone and in need of support from a friendly face.

How long is the workday for a home health aide?

As a home health aide, your workday and job description will depend entirely on what your client requires. The most common contracts require you to work long hours, and you'll stay with the patient for more than 6 hours. Some might even move in with the patient to provide 24/7 support. You also have the freedom to select shorter shifts of a few hours only.