Although care work may appear to be a gentle job, it involves a lot of physical activity such as lifting, bending, standing for long periods of time and repetitive movements. When assessing Care Assistant Jobs in Dublin, it is also important to consider the physical demands of the work and how to manage the wear and tear of the body to ensure that you can sustain working in this field for years to come.
Learning Safe Lifting Properly
There is a lot of danger in manual handling for the care assistant’s back and shoulders. If a care assistant uses their legs to lift rather than their back, keeps the person near to them and does not twist while lifting then they are using safe lifting. However, many care employers fail to give their care staff manual handling training and rely on them to use their own initiative and work out how best to manual handle safely. The Health and Safety Authority’s safe manual handling techniques website explains the mechanics of why poor manual handling technique can cause injury over time, not just in that one poor lift.
Coping With Long Spells on Your Feet
You can shift your weight from foot to foot while on stand to help alleviate the pressure on your calves and help stop your lower back from feeling tight. Even occasional calf stretches against a wall can be of great benefit in the long run. Also, make sure you are taking your scheduled breaks and sitting down instead of grabbing more paperwork to catch up on while you are on stand.
Why Repetitive Movements Wear You Down
Repetitive activities like these do individual parts of the task for you but as a whole they can be very detrimental to your joints and muscles. A way to combat this is to mix up the way you do things as much as possible. For example, if you are dressing someone then alternate sides with them for things like putting on socks and shirts. Bend from the knees instead of at the waist when picking things up and try to make sure you have time to recover between tasks.
Choosing the Right Footwear and Clothing
Supportive, well cushioned shoes with a non-slip sole can make a massive difference to how you feel. Flat, worn out trainers are one of the worst things you can wear for long periods of time as they can give you problems with your feet and lower back. Comfortable, practical clothing for care work is also essential and includes things that will give with you such as when bending and crouching, won’t get caught on anything, and are layers that you can wear and remove as needed. See also Care Assistant Jobs Dublin.
Managing Fatigue Across Shifts
We work on shifts which can be back-to-back. We need to manage our own fatigue on our shifts and ensure that we pace ourselves throughout the day. Our breaks are there to be used as rest periods and we should avoid using them to do other things. Our employment rights for care workers in Ireland detail our minimum rights to rest and to have breaks between our working days.
Simple Exercises That Protect You
There are simple stretches that you can do before and after your shifts to help prevent strain. The majority of these are simple hamstring and calf stretches as well as slow back extensions. Also there are simple exercises to help strengthen your core such as planks and bridges. These can be done within a matter of minutes in the comfort of your own home.
Spotting Early Signs of Strain
It is very important that we flag up any pain or discomfort that we may experience on shift and allow our supervisor to look into the matter further. It is no good to wait until the injury has fully developed into a long-term problem. Care work is part of a regulated profession and the regulation of health and social care professionals aims to ensure that safe working conditions and standards of practice are upheld.
How Equipment Genuinely Reduces Risk
The various bits of equipment for transferring people are used because some transfers are simply not to be done manually, regardless of how powerful or careful a person is. So, for example, using a hoist, a slide or a transfer board instead of trying to lift someone up and down is going to be better for both the person being transferred and the care worker transferring them.
Of course, there is the physical side of care work but that can be managed. With good training, the right equipment and attention to your own body care work can be a long-term career not a short-term one.
