Health Care Assistants are prepared to work in a variety of health care facilities and community agencies. They are important and valued members of the health care team. HCAs promote and maintain the health, safety, independence, comfort and well-being of individuals and families. HCAs provide personal care assistance and services in a caring manner that recognizes and supports the unique needs, abilities and backgrounds of clients and their families. They work as members of a health care team in a variety of settings with direction and supervision from regulated health care professionals.

The work done by HCAs is based on a set of fundamental values, beliefs, and ethical principles that are consistently reflected in all aspects of their work with clients, families, team members, and others. These core values, beliefs, and principles serve as foundations of HCA practice:

• Human beings should be viewed from a holistic perspective.
• Older adults are individuals deserving our respect.
• Health and healing are interconnected.
• Everyone has a right to health care.
• Caring and caregiving are central to HCA practice.
• Family is critical to health and healing.

Human Beings Should Be Viewed from a Holistic Perspective

All people have physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and spiritual dimensions. Everyone has a unique perception of themselves and others that shape their experiences, responses, and choices. Factors that influence a person’s perceptions include one’s life experiences, values, socio-cultural background, gender, abilities, resources, and developmental level.

People are constantly changing as they interact with others and with the world around them. As well, people move through definable developmental transitions as they grow and change across the lifespan. Each developmental transition includes certain developmental tasks, which are defined and influenced by one’s family, culture, gender, and social cohort.

Older Adults Are Individuals Deserving Our Respect

Aging is a normal developmental process of human life. It involves a series of physiological, psychological, and social transitions that start at birth and continue throughout life. As we age, our abilities, potentials, possibilities, and goals can be expected to change. However, each person’s potential for growth and development exists throughout life.

Later adulthood can be a fulfilling and enlightened time of life. For many people, aging gives rise to insight, creativity, and serenity, which can provide the foundation for true self-fulfillment.

Despite social perceptions, older people are not all alike. If anything, people become less similar as they get older. Older adults have a wide variety of interests, life experiences, backgrounds, and values, and each older person must be viewed and valued as a unique individual.

The experience of a long life provides an older person with a special perspective based on years of learning and living. The older adult needs to be valued for the person they are, as well as the person they have been in the past. Every older person has a life story and a wealth of experience, which is part of who that person is today.

Within Western cultural values, independence is valued and viewed as a desired goal for everyone to attain and maintain. This strong societal value sometimes makes it difficult for those older adults who experience declining health to relinquish independence, but independence is often fostered through interdependence. Interdependence involves mutually supportive relationships that acknowledge each person’s capabilities and potentials while also providing support when and where needed. This sort of interdependency enables older individuals to feel valued and recognized despite their need for assistance.

Negative attitudes and stereotypes about any group of people are detrimental. For older people, negative attitudes and stereotypes may contribute to inaccurate beliefs such as: all older people suffer from markedly diminished physical and cognitive abilities, all older individuals will become dependent on others, older individuals are incapable of change, and older people are a drain on society. How we interact with older people will influence how they see themselves. We all have a role in breaking down stereotypes and unhealthy negative attitudes.

Health and Healing Are Interconnected

The World Health Organization’s definition of health as a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being—and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity—has gained widespread acceptance. The World Health Organization further defines health as “the extent to which an individual or group is able on the one hand to realize aspirations or needs and on the other hand, to change or cope with the environment.” Health, from this point of view, is seen as a resource for everyday living, not an objective of living. It is a positive concept that emphasizes psychological, cognitive, social, and spiritual resources as well as physical capacity.

Health and healing co-exist. Healing is not simply viewed as movement along a continuum from illness to health. Healing is the process of enhancing health and responding to challenges. Challenges may be in the physical, psychological, cognitive, social, or spiritual dimensions of health. During the healing process, resources are mobilized, hardiness is enhanced, and vulnerability is minimized.

Everyone Has a Right to Health Care

The right to comprehensive health care for everyone is highly valued by Canadians.

Health care services include health promotion along with preventive, curative, rehabilitative, and supportive services. All people need to have access to those services that meet their needs at any given time.

People have the right and responsibility to be full participants in making decisions about, and looking after, their own health and the health of their family. Health care practitioners serve to facilitate the individual’s and family’s ability to make informed choices and be actively involved in decision-making related to health care options.

Caring and Caregiving Are Central to HCA Practice

Caring, in an interpersonal context, implies a genuine concern for the well-being of another person. Caring may take the form of courtesy, kindness, or compassion. It may involve acknowledgement, encouragement and giving genuine praise. It may also show itself through interpersonal warmth, cheerfulness, and gentle humour.

A caring act is always an expression of reverence for the basic value and dignity of another person. It is never possessive or patronizing, and caring never promotes unnecessary dependency.

The need and desire to give and receive care is rooted in our very nature as human beings. Babies who are not adequately cared for may experience developmental delays, physical illness, and even death. Caring is essential for optimum human growth and development. Without adequate human caring in our lives, we cannot reach our potential as human beings.

The capacity for caring needs to be nurtured for it to develop and blossom. To become caring human beings, we must experience caring interactions with others. Caring brings forth caring.

Within a formalized caregiving role, opportunities to express care are many and they are seldom dramatic. Care providers display caring in a multitude of small ways – a kindly word, a caring touch, a helpful gesture. As caring blossoms, the valuing of the recipient of care is increased, as is the valuing of the caregiving role itself.

In their work with clients and families, HCAs actualize a caring approach in many ways. They:

• View the client as a whole person with a past, present, and future. The client is viewed as a member of a family, a community, and a culture – an entirely unique human being.
• Strive to understand what is meaningful to the client and assure that the client’s values and beliefs are respected.
• Assist clients to meet those basic human needs which the client is unable to meet unaided.
• Respect the client’s privacy and confidentiality.
• Communicate effectively, using active listening and empathic responses.
• Respect the client’s potential and promote personal growth by offering information, choices, opportunities and assistance.
• Acknowledge the right of each client to participate in their care.
• Include the clients, as much as possible, in decisions that affect them.
• Respect the role that families play in the promotion of healing.
• Act as caring advocates on behalf of the client when necessary and appropriate.
• Display honesty and integrity in all their actions.
• Demonstrate competence, reliability, responsibility, and accountability.
• Take responsibility for the safety of themselves and others.
• Display a gentle acceptance of the human imperfections of themselves and others.
• Display a commitment to their own growth and development as care providers.

The Family Is Critical to Health and Healing

The family is the foundation of society. It is the primary socializing force. It is within the intimacy of the family that we are fed, clothed, sheltered, and protected from harm. The family provides us with our first experiences of human caring, acceptance, and understanding. Within the family we initially learn values, beliefs, and standards of conduct. Many of the lifestyle choices that ultimately determine our physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and spiritual health and well-being spring from our early family experience.

Like individuals, each family is unique. Every family has its own particular set of values, beliefs, standards, and goals, which are influenced by socio-economic, environmental, educational, religious, and cultural factors. Each family influences and is influenced by its members and the larger socio-cultural community in which it lives and develops.

Families also experience definable developmental stages that change the character, functions, and size of the family unit over time.

Although families come in a variety of sizes and configurations, the interdependence of members is a constant theme. Family members assume roles and responsibilities that are complementary and interrelated. Consequently, changes in one family member affect all family members.

Health challenges faced by family members can represent a major demand for change and adjustment within the family unit. The family’s response to the situation will influence the way in which the affected person perceives their health. Likewise, the response of the family can greatly influence the course of a health challenge. As a consequence, families must be acknowledged and included as an integral part of care.

Care providers must be sensitive to and respectful of the language, culture, values, and preferences of the families with whom they interact. Health care practitioners must recognize the socio-cultural and economic influences on the family and respect the means by which the family is attempting to cope with increased stress.

Text Attribution

Values, Beliefs, and Principals” is adapted from the B.C. Health Care Assistants Core Competency Profile, Government of British Columbia, April 2023.