How A Caregiver Certification Can Enhance Your Patient Care

A caregiver certification program has many benefits and can significantly improve your skills as a caregiver. It’s likely you already have some knowledge and experience behind you. However, a caregiver certification can take your personal and professional development to the next level. Find out if you have free access to Trualta’s training programs and certification offerings. 

In this article, we’ll explore how caregiver certification programs improve your skills, boost confidence, and ensure you’re prepared with the latest knowledge to provide excellent patient care.

Level Up Your Care Skills 

Leveling up care skills is essential for new caregivers and experienced caregivers alike. Let’s take a look at how a caregiver certification can ensure you’re providing the best care:

Expand & Refresh Your Knowledge 

A caregiver training program is one of the best places to learn and refresh yourself on the background and information essential to providing quality care. 

Whether you’re a home health aide providing home care for a patient at home or helping in a dementia care unit in a hospital or nursing home, there are essential things that are critical to learn and remember. 

A training program will teach you about:

• Providing hands-on help with tasks like personal care, transfers, and eating.
• Using tools and equipment to make tasks easier or safer, like using a shower chair during showers.
• Communication skills that can help with reducing challenging behaviors and resistance to tasks. 
• Legal and ethical considerations when providing care, like documentation, getting liability insurance, or how to report abuse. 
• Emergency preparedness like providing basic first aid or the basics of CPR.

Turn Your Knowledge Into Skills

A training program not only provides the information basics but also shows you how to directly apply them to develop core skills. A caregiver certification is tailored to show you how to take expert, evidence-based background and turn it into practical strategies, tips, and problem-solving tools. It’s not enough to know about dementia, aging, or fall prevention – a certification program takes you a step further by showing you how to take your knowledge and make it useful for daily care. 

Test Your Skills  

You’ve read articles and blogs, attended seminars, or watched videos, but do you really know how much learning you took away from them? Or, maybe you do recognize your learning, but you don’t have a concrete way to show it to others. A certification program would be the answer for you. 

Formal training programs often end with a quiz, certification exam, or other way to put your knowledge and learned skills to the test. Having an established pass limit, you demonstrate to yourself, patients, and employers that not only have you completed training – you really know your stuff. 

After all, anyone can click and press “next” with each passing reading material, scroll quickly through, or fast forward on a video, not really watching it at all. Demonstrating your learning through a test feature in a certification program can give you the recognition needed for actually learning all those new pieces of knowledge and skills. 

Feel More Confident

Whether you’re a new or experienced caregiver, a confidence boost is always helpful. 

New Caregivers

It’s common for new caregivers feel like they’re thrown into the job. This often happens immediately. You’re one-on-one with a patient or loved one with little, and sometimes no, direct support. A caregiver certification program that clearly outlines all the essential information, translates it into practical skills, and allows you to demonstrate your learning, can help you feel more confident that you know what you’re doing when it comes to providing care. You and your patients will know you’ve done all you can to learn and build the skills you need. 

Experienced Caregivers 

Has it been some time since you’ve had caregiver training? You might have many valuable first-hand experiences that you still learn from daily. However, you’re left wondering, “What have I been forgetting about it?” or “Is there new information out there I’m not familiar with yet?” 

A caregiver certification program can lay it all out for you. With refreshers, as well as newly researched evidence-based practices, the training program can help you feel confident that you’re up to date with everything you need to do to support your patients. 

Considerations When Choosing A Certification Program

Here is a list of considerations to help guide you to find the certification program that’s right for you:

• Hourly requirements. Some states require caregivers in certain professions, like a healthcare aide or nursing assistant, to have a minimum number of hours of training. Contact the agency you’re working for, or the one you’d like to work for, to get more information. You can then research a program that meets those training requirements. 
• Certificate of completion. It’s valuable to show employers a certificate, so you may want to look for a program that offers one that shows you’ve met the learning requirements of the program. 
• Accreditation. Some programs are accredited by specific governing bodies. Because these programs are typically more thoroughly vetted, it may be valuable to consider which accreditation is important to you, your patients, or your employer. 
• Modality. Certification programs are offered in a variety of ways. Consider whether you prefer in-person, virtual, or asynchronous learning, as there are options for you. 
• Cost. Some programs are offered for free, while others are at a cost. Consider your budget or if the agency you work with offers funding for you to participate in training courses like a certification program. 
• Specificity. Programs can be tailored specifically to the profession you belong to or the population you work with. Consider whether you’d like your certification program to have specific, specialized training or be more generally applicable to a variety of patient care circumstances. 

Find out more about what you can learn in a caregiver training program. 

References:  

https://www.cielgr.com/blog/the-importance-and-benefits-of-caregiver-certification