Patient Services Assistant
What the work is
Assists with the provision of care to patients in a hospital by ensuring wards are neat and tidy, lifting and turning patients, transporting them in wheelchairs or on movable beds, and providing direct care and support.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Transports patients in wheelchairs or mobile beds
- Provides safe patient handling and positioning in beds and transfers to and from beds
- Undertakes general duties, ensuring hospital wards are clean, orderly and sanitised, maintaining infection control protocols
- Provides direct care and support to patients, assisting with their personal needs such as showering and dressing
- Stocks and replenishes supplies of medical equipment, and transfers items between departments or wards
- Assists with the preparation and serving of patients' meals and beverages
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a general ward and the corridors of a fictional city hospital. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A patient who was afraid of the shower is clean, warm and cracking jokes by the end
- You get a long-stay patient outside into the sunshine for the first time in weeks
- A shift where the ward looks tidy and every patient has had what they needed
Hard days
- Moving and lifting people all day while the ward phone keeps ringing
- A patient or family member who is angry and takes it out on whoever is nearest
- Being asked to do three things at once by three different people
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 442532, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.