Personal Care

• Nursing assistants must collect specimens from patients, administer medications or treatments, assist patients with walking or exercising and assisting patients with dressing and undressing. Nursing assistants may also have to take vital signs, prepare patients for tests, treatments, or therapy, administer enemas, douches or irrigations to patients or work with patients with mental disabilities or illnesses. They may also have to weigh patients, handle moving objects and work as part of a medical team that examines and treats clinic outpatients.
  
  

Physical Duties

• Some of the physical objectives of a nursing assistant include changing the bed linen of a patient, either in a nursing home or in the patient's own home. Nursing assistants must also make it their duty to prepare the medical treatment room in a nursing facility, clean rooms or work areas, lift and transport sick or injured patients and set up patient care equipment. Also part of a nursing assistant's job duties are preparing, serving and collecting food trays, restraining patients if necessary, turning and repositioning bedridden patients to prevent bedsores, and observing patients' conditions, measuring and recording food and liquid intake and output and vital signs and reporting changes to head nurses or other professional staff.
  
  

Adminstrative Objectives

• Some administrative objectives of a nursing assistant include answering phones and directing visitors to the correct rooms and locations throughout the nursing home or hospital; delivering messages, documents and specimens; performing clerical duties like scheduling appointments and processing documents; explaining medical instructions to patients and family members and setting up equipment like oxygen tents, portable x-ray machines and overhead irrigation bottles.
  
  

Other Objectives

• A nursing assistant must also make it their objective to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships; observe, receive and otherwise obtain information from all relevant sources; develop specific plans and goals to prioritize, organize and accomplish the work; coordinate the work and activities of others; take inventory of medical supplies or instruments; maintain dental or medical records; and think creatively. They must also instruct patients in the use of a supportive device, instruct patients in methods to improve functional activities, perform for or work directly with the public, resolve conflicts and negotiate with others, evaluate information to determine compliance with standards, laws and regulations.