Paraprofessional Health Institute

On-the-job Training

• Role of the HHA in caring for cognitively impaired clients
  • Use care plan for interventions and report successful interventions to supervisor and family
  • Monitor and document episodes of targeted behaviors and/or new behaviors
  • Recognize signs of stress and strategies for coping within self other caregivers and family members
• Demonstrate effective communication & interaction with cognitively impaired and their families
  • Demonstrate redirecting a client
  • Demonstrate use of validation therapy
  • Verbalize and demonstrate various approaches for a client who is resisting personal care that will maintain dignity and respect
  • Demonstrate appropriate interventions for client who is yelling or screaming
  • Demonstrate therapeutic communication with significant others
  • Demonstrate coaching techniques to help other caregivers and family members cope with the Dementia process
• Provide assistance with independence, mobility, and therapeutic activities
  • Demonstrate use of therapeutic activities/exercises to maintain joint function for the cognitively impaired client
  • Implement care strategies that encourage independence in activities of daily living without increasing client anxiety, respect the clients dignity and desire for control
  • Implement therapeutic activities appropriate for early, middle, and late states of Dementia
  • Demonstrate use of therapeutic activities to de-escalate a client who is anxious
• Uses nutritional interventions to enhance nutritional well being
  • Demonstrate adapting meal preparation to maximize nutritional intake (i.e., offering small servings, finger foods, introducing foods one at a time, frequency meals, snacks, and fluids that are acceptable to cognitively impaired clients)
  • Explain modifications needed to maintain nutritional status
• Psychoactive medications and side effects
  • Describe basic features of psychoactive medications and their side effects
  • Demonstrate ability to observe, record and report side effects
• Maintain a safe environment for cognitively impaired
  • Maintain a safe environment for wandering clients
  • Maintain safety from potential toxic substances that the confused client may attempt to ingest
  • Is able to implement interventions to minimize environmental stimuli that may increase a confused client’s agitation, (i.e., noise levels, large groups, television, and radio)