These healthcare underdogs may be a little unnoticed but an advanced healthcare sector can’t function properly without them. When we look at a traditional healthcare system, we often focus on the doctors and nurses; however, there seems a missing part of the puzzle. With the demanding nature of the medical world, situations are often overwhelming for doctors and nurses yet beyond these overwhelming aspects of the health sector are the minor essential care.
Sometimes, while doctors and nurses are hooked on the more complex procedures someone has to take care of the basic yet essential aspect of patient care. Such basic but essential care may include, wound dressing, medication administration, and vitality monitoring. This calls for a dedicated extra care from healthcare assistants.
Tips on Securing a Healthcare Assistance Job in the UK
It is one thing to desire to work in the UK as a healthcare assistant but it is another thing to secure a job. Even when you secure a job, your visa success is another thing entirely. In this case, following these steps may help facilitate your visa or employment. We decided to give you these tips so that you start prepared.
- Be timely: Whether for the job application stage or the visa stage, always endeavor to attend to things in time. Effective timing will be appreciated by your employer and it can make things easier with your visa.
- Prepare your profile: Nowadays, several remote job applications are available online. Your employers will also conduct part of their screening online. It is time to keep a clean profile or tidy up your online profile if you are not confident about your past online conduct.
- Build an impressive CV: A CV is not just any document, it is one that ought to include your qualifications, experience, and other accomplishment. An impressive profile will facilitate your employment and may also make your migration smoother.
- Provide accurate information at all times: With employment-based visas, transparency is expected by not just your employer but also the UK authority. Falsifying information may risk your employment and visa.
- Ready your funds: You will surely earn huge money in the UK as a healthcare assistant but first you have to get to the UK. This requires a visa, travel tickets, and other expenditures. Either you are paying for it yourself or someone has to pay for you. Whichever way, before starting your visa process, seek the guidance of a UK travel expert to arrive at the total cost of your potential travel budget.
- Seek professional guidance from immigration experts as oversea employment and visa concepts can be complex.
Understanding the Healthcare Assistance Job and Why it is Important to the UK Health System
In several situations especially when the patient is in stable condition or in the process of recovery, assigning nurses or doctors to monitor such patients may seem like an overuse of Human Resources and that’s exactly the point where the healthcare assistant comes.
Often individuals may confuse healthcare assistants with nurses; because, of the nature and traditional relationships between doctors and nurses, individuals often mistake nurses as doctors’ assistants. While they often work together, both field has clear differences, similarities, and boundaries.
Healthcare assistants are different from nurses and doctors in the sense that their roles are often superficial and mostly assistive.
Role of a Healthcare Assistance
In the UK, it is a really busy country. In most cases, patients may lack family members or friends who will be willing to care for them in the hospital. This is why most hospitals deploy healthcare assistance.
Naturally, it is not the role of the doctor or nurses to feed a patient, bathe, or assist a patient to sit up. This role should be on the caregiver. Ideally, such a role should fall on family or friends; however, in many cases, such caregivers are not available in most hospitals. This is why in addition to doctors and nurses, hospitals in the UK employ healthcare assistants. Now, this has become a crucial aspect of the UK health sector.
With health advancements, the United Kingdom has become a major hub for medical tourism. This means that the same factors that necessitated doctors’ and nurses’ migration are also impacting healthcare assistance as such, there are shortage of qualified individuals who can take on the roles of healthcare assistant hence the profession now qualifies for visa sponsorship.
How does UK visa sponsorship work for healthcare assistance?
Like every other sector where local workforce supply is not sufficient, employers are faced with the option of having to bring in such workers from overseas. This usually happens through visa sponsorship.
Visa sponsorship may simply be described as a migratory tool used by employers to bring their employees into the UK; however, visa sponsorship is not only useful in migrating employees. Family members can also deploy visa sponsorship to migrate relatives.
Given healthcare assistance visa sponsorship, hospitals or other facilities in need of such assistants may utilize it to gain approval to employ and migrate foreigners. Note that successfully migrating such healthcare assistance workers involves a series of responsibilities.
Healthcare Assistance Migration Responsibilities for sponsor
- Get licensed: Migrating a foreigner to work in the UK involves strict scrutiny. As an employer of migrants, you must obtain approval. This usually involves some licensing fees. Employers can learn more and possibly apply for a license here.
- Ensure applicants have at least basic knowledge of healthcare through a holistic screening.
- Assist migrating healthcare assistance during the migration process, upon arrival, and start of duty until the applicant is effectively adapted to the UK society.
- Ensure that at the given time of employment and initiation of the applicant’s migration that employment qualifies for visa sponsorship.
- Validate employment through a mutually acknowledged contract with the employee.
- Support and guide employees during the job application and visa processing stages. Guidance and support must continue even upon the arrival of the applicant in the United Kingdom.
Potential (Applicant) Healthcare Assistance responsibilities given the UK visa sponsorship
Individuals hoping to migrate to the United Kingdom to work as healthcare assistants must be ready to attend to some employment and immigration requirements. While this requirement may vary given individuals and applicants’ nationality or other factors, below are the common requirements:
- Provide employment-related documents: Visa sponsorship migration for healthcare assistance is a health, immigration, labor, and employment focus. In this case, applicants are expected to provide documents justifying employment and potential migration approval. These documents include:
- Educational accomplishment proof
- Mutually acknowledged and binding contract with the employer
- An aggregate of experience and expertise through a detailed CV
- Provide other essential immigration and employment requirements. These may include:
- Health screening results
- Passport
- Applicants is to provide a police issued character report from their home country.
- Security clearance may be required; however, this may not always be the case.
- Local background assessment documents example birth certificate
- Indication of ability to pay for visa and associated fees by tendering bank statement
- Ability to communicate effectively in English. This is important for healthcare assistance workers and may require an excellent IELTS performance.
Criteria for Working as Healthcare Assistance in the UK
- Intermediate knowledge of healthcare
- Effective communication in English
- Passion for the healthcare sector
- Experience
- Literacy: The ability to not just read but also write is essential to healthcare assistance. Often such assistance may need to explain a prescription to a patient, such may require reading.
- Compassion: Healthcare jobs require individuals who desire to save lives or make life better for others.
- Observance: Assisting doctors or nurses in monitoring patients may include checking vitality and communicating patient’s performance. This needs being able to effectively observe patients and how they respond at each given time.
- Ability to understand healthcare machines and their readings: A healthcare assistants should be able to communicate to doctors or nurses how a patient is performing by reading vitality signals.
Benefits of Care Assistance Jobs in the UK
- Lucrative salary: With an average salary of about £12 per hour, this job is considered highly lucrative. Experienced healthcare assistants may earn up to £13.5 per hour.
- Moderate workload: Given how hectic working as a doctor or nurse may be, the healthcare assistance workload may be regarded as moderate. This is because a majority of the jobs are basic care for the patient and monitoring of performance.
- Insurance: Whether doctors, nurses, or healthcare assistants, the hospital environment can expose workers to diverse hazards. This is why insurance is usually part of most healthcare work in the UK. Healthcare assistants also benefit from such insurance.
- Learning opportunities: The smart healthcare assistant may find valuable opportunities to learn and advance experience in the health sector. This is because the job avails such workers the opportunity to interact with doctors, nurses, and even patients. This may become a great avenue to advance knowledge in the sector.
- Access to advanced society and health sectors: The UK is one of the most advanced countries in the world, and migrant healthcare assistance workers are exposed to a society that’s highly developed.
- Networking: For healthcare assistance, they have some chances that doctors and nurses rarely have. Most times they get to cultivate a healthy friendship with the patients that outlast the hospital walls.
Most times, hospital stay in the UK can get boring especially when the patient starts recovering and no longer needs heavy medical attention. On several occasions, some patients would like to have a conversation and usually, it is the healthcare assistance that’s likely available. From there a healthy friendship may grow.
Exploring your employment chances through a remote application
Individuals who have contacts in the UK may be able to be employed for jobs through representation. For those who don’t have a reliable contact in the UK, their best bet would be a remote job application.
In the case of such remote applications, applicants may find online channels like social media and search engines useful. The NHS website and other employment portals are also vital places to gain knowledge about healthcare job vacancies in the UK and potentially apply.
Dedicated employers or staffing companies are other avenues for gaining employment as a healthcare assistant in the UK. Trying any of these approaches where remote application is possible may help potential employees secure a healthcare assistance job in the UK without having to first be in the UK.
UK healthcare firms that employ healthcare assistants and sponsor visas
When it comes to the UK healthcare sector, the NHS is the most prominent institution that facilitates the employment and migration of most international employees. You may desire to learn more about the NHS and how it impacts your UK migration as a potential healthcare assistant worker in the country.
- Examining the role of the NHS: The National Health Service of the UK is like an umbrella institution for the health sector in the country and is responsible for a majority of the health expert migration-related visa sponsorships. Apart from the NHS, other licensed health institutions and health workers employers may also sponsor workers. This means that in simple terms, your likely UK visa sponsor as a health worker is the NHS and others. You can check for vacancies at the NHS here.
Hospitals Affiliated with the NHS where employer migration can happen autonomously or through the NHS.
There are other autonomous visa sponsors in the UK that are affiliated with the NHS, especially in issues of foreign employment and migration. These health facilities can sponsor visas for their employees perhaps employment meets sponsorship requirements. They include St George’s Hospital and Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow.
Several other hospitals are affiliated with the NHS or autonomous and may employ healthcare assistance from overseas and sponsor their migration to the UK. Further research may be helpful.
Conclusion
The healthcare assistance job is an essential aspect of the UK healthcare sector and at an average of £12 per hour salary, we consider it lucrative. This is especially true given the lower workload and all the other benefits the job offers like closer interactions with doctors and nurses which may pave the way for an amazing future career. We encourage our readers who are passionate about the healthcare sector and UK living to give it a try.