MightyRecruiterPsychiatric aides help care for people who have developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. Much of what aides do include making sure there is a clean and safe environment for the patients and helping them with their daily activities. Psychiatric aides often participate in group activities, help transport patients and help restrain those who become violent.
When writing your psychiatric aide job description, make sure you incorporate the qualities you desire in an applicant. Good psychiatric aides have compassion for their patients and want to help. They must be able to get along with others and have patience working with challenging patients. Because of the physical nature of the job, they must also have stamina.
An aide should also have good observational skills and be sensitive to behavioral changes. The following psychiatric aide job description template demonstrates how to include these qualities and other key elements when writing your own.
Psychiatric Aide Job Summary
Our company is a leader in mental health care, and as a psychiatric aide you would play an integral role in our behavioral services. Your responsibilities will include assisting emotionally disturbed or mentally impaired patients in a variety of ways. Each day will present new challenges and varied routines while you provide physical, psychological, emotional or rehabilitative care for individuals of all ages. You will be closely supervised by, and report to, the medical and nursing staff on duty. Your care will help our patients stay clean, healthy and safe, and tending to their personal needs will help enrich their lives.
Job Responsibilities
- Help patients with personal needs, such as personal hygiene, good grooming, dressing and eating
- Assist with routine physical checks, such as weighing patients and taking vital signs
- Provide rehabilitative, emotional, physical or psychological care as directed by medical and nursing staff
- Observe patient behaviors and report unusual conditions to appropriate professionals on duty
- Perform housekeeping tasks, such as making beds, washing clothes and changing bed linens
- Maintain safe surroundings by sanitizing and cleaning furnishings and patient care equipment
- Accompany patients to recreational activities, meals, clinics and field trips to ensure safety
- Administer prescribed medications and collect laboratory specimens as needed
- Encourage, supervise and organize patient participation in activities, such as counseling
- Record patient data, such as symptoms, vital signs, behavioral observations, injuries and accidents
- Help in restraining physically violent and hostile patients using proper intervention techniques
- Provide therapeutic care by daily interaction with patients and listening to their concerns
- Assist with the admission and discharge of patients
- Assist in emergency situations
Job Skills & Qualifications
Reqiured:
- High school diploma or equivalent
- CPR certification
- Ability to follow oral and written instruction
- Ability to deal with physically aggressive people
Preferred:
- Prior work experience in the mental health field
- Experience with Microsoft Office Suite
Psychiatric Aide Job Responsibilities
Jobseekers depend on the section of a psychiatric aide job description in which you describe the responsibilities of this role when deciding whether to apply for a position. This section is likely to be one of the lengthiest and should give prospective applicants a sense of what this job entails. You do not need to cover every single aspect of the job, only the unique features of the daily schedule and general priorities.
Create a list and use bullets to distinguish each responsibility. List no more than eight responsibilities and start each point with a unique action verb. This can help to keep the list accessible and maintain a consistent focus on what a candidate should expect to bring to the position. Providing specific details in a psychiatric aide job description can narrow down the number of applications you receive and help strong candidates set themselves apart in their application, cover letter and resume.
Psychiatric aide job responsibilities can vary depending on the facility. You might consider including the following general duties
- Meet with patients and update information on behavior and vital signs, reporting serious incidents or notable occurrences to staff
- Clean and prepare patient rooms to general facility standards or, in some cases, patient specifications
- Restrain or assist patients as needed in rooms and ensure patients remain in approved parts of the facility and do not leave the premises without authorization
- Perform administrative tasks including updating database records, answering calls or cleaning the facility
Psychiatric Aide Job Specifications
To attract the best candidates for the open position, you should establish clear specifications in a psychiatric aide job description. These may range from the educational background or training required to qualify a candidate for a position to the general skills needed to fill this role. The more exact the specifications you list, the less likely you will be to receive applications from candidates who are completely unqualified for the job.
Format specifications with bullet points. Start with the most definitive requirements before moving on to broader abilities and then to preferred specifications. You may want to consult with the management of a facility to determine which specifications to include in a psychiatric aide job description and how to prioritize this list. It is generally a good idea to put the most important prerequisites in the main list and then include any optional or recommended qualifications in a separate list.
Your job description will likely include psychiatric aide job specifications that resemble the following:
High school diploma or equivalent required Minimum of 1-2 years of training or previous experience working with psychiatric patients Physical ability to assist or restrain patients if needed Basic administrative skills, including typing, data entry and database use
