Handbook For Care

Muriel Flack, RGN, RCNT and Margaret Johnston, RGN, RCNT, DipN. 164pp, 216x138mm, 1986, 0906584132
£8.00 (UK postpaid £9.00)

Practical textbook for care assistants/nursing auxiliaries working in the community and in hospital. Equally
appropriate for residential care staff and pre-nurse courses.
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What are my main duties as a care assistant? What are the details I need to get right every time? How do I relate my work to that of the nurse? Can I be sure that what I am doing is safe for the patient? Is it safe for me? And what are the limits of my responsibilities?

All members of the caring team are part of an interdependent chain, and care assistants, also referred to as nursing auxiliaries or nursing assistants, are one of the links in this chain. They assist professional staff in duties that cover a wide spectrum of care. Their work ranges from helping to attend to the patient's basic needs and functions, and providing a safe and therapeutic environment, to responding to the patient as a person with individual values and anxieties.

This text provides practical guidelines for all aspects of the job. Each chapter covers one major topic, with definitions and checklists throughout, and detailed illustrations wherever these are likely to be helpful.

The authors have extensive nursing experience, both as clinical nurses in hospital and the community, and also as clinical teachers. Muriel Flack trained at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. Among her varied nursing roles she has been an in-service training sister, responsible for the induction and continuing instruction of care assistants, both in the classrom and in the on-going care of patients. She has lectured at the Oxford College of Further Education to heads and assistant heads of residential homes for the elderly, and has also worked as a continence adviser in these homes. Margaret Johnston trained at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Associated Hospitals. She has held various posts in Oxford, including those of in-service training sister and clinical teacher, and currently holds the position of tutor/facilitator in the Oxfordshire Health Authority Clinical Education and Practice Team.