Seven Kiwi-Indians have graduated from Auckland Hospital’s newly introduced Health Care Assistance (HCA) Earn and Learn Program this week, giving wings to their aspirations and rising up on the professional healthcare career ladder.
A total of 44 Health care Assistants have graduated on Wednesday, September 21 at the Auckland Hospital as Health Care Assistants with around 15.9 per cent being of the Kiwi-Indian origin.
Sarina Prasad, who was working as a cleaner in the ward 77 (Orthopaedic) of Auckland Hospital since 2014 is one such recent Kiwi-Indian graduate who has become a professional Health Care Assistant after going through nine months of earn and learn program at Auckland Hospital.
Sharing her inspirational journey with the Indian Weekender Prasad said, “I am extremely delighted after having graduated from this earn and learn program and become a full-fledged health care assistant.”
“Now I will be able to do what I love the most – helping our wonderful, registered nurses in serving patients in the ward,” said a visibly elated Prasad.
Prasad had first arrived in New Zealand from Fiji around 2009 on a spouse work visa along with her husband and has been working in Auckland hospital since 2014.
“I was always excited when we were called upon to help our nurses. But there were many things that I could not do despite having a passion because I was not professionally trained to do so.”
“Now I will be able to help nurses in delivering professional care to our patients,” Prasad said.
When asked if she received ample support from the ward 77 where she was previously working Prasad emphatically said, “In fact it were the colleagues at my ward who inspired me to consider opting for the Earn and Learn Program and upskill myself into a trained health care professional.”
The Health Care Assistance (HCA) Earn and Learn Program is designed to train and upskill primarily (but not exclusively) those already working within the health care sector (as non-technical professional such as hospo, cleaning, childcare etc) and retrain them as health care professionals.
The course may augur well for the current crisis of acute shortage of skilled health care workers in New Zealand.
Revealing more details on this program HCA Earn & Learn Programme Lead, Helen Nattrass said, “This program was launched in August 2021 as one of the many measures of responding to staff shortage in health care sector where it aims to retrain health care assistants without having to lose regular stream of income.”
“It can be hard to give up income to re-train, but with Earn and Learn programmes students can now make the transition, like Sarina did, from non-healthcare roles like cleaners, hospo, childcare and caregiving.”
“So far the program has helped People transition from roles like cleaners, hospo, childcare and caregiving into healthcare, Removed a financial barrier to training from day one – they no longer have to give up an income, Provide much needed support to our nurses and other staff during a particularly challenging year, Opened the door to other health careers like nursing, phlebotomy and midwifery and increase our Maori, Pacific and Indian staff to better reflect our communities.” Helen Nattrass said.
Following this week’s cohort of graduates another group of 18 students from the second cohort, who finish their studies in July, a subsequent third cohort who enrolled in the program in May will also be graduating soon. A fourth group of students are set to start in late September.
Expressing satisfaction on the retention rates of the program, Helen said, “The retention rate is high – from the first group of 31 students, 26 are on track to graduate.”
Health Care Assistant Earn and Learn Programme
The programme:
The programme takes about 9 months to complete, and students work to complete a level 3 qualification in Health and Wellbeing. They can remain at Auckland City Hospital as one of the valued Health Care Assistants, or the qualification can be a springboard to other careers in health.
What does a Health Care Assistant do?
Our Health Care Assistants (HCA) provide help and support on the wards under the direction and delegation of a registered nurse.
They work across clinics, wards, the emergency departments and in operating rooms, and have a wide-ranging role, from supporting patients with comfort and concerns to ensuring the environment is ready to provide the best care to our patients.
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