I've only been a Healthcare Assistant for about 2 months all told (I'm a University student and work at a local Care Home over the holidays) and so I am obviously not the highest authority on this subject - BUT - I believe that HCAs don't have any medical training in medication and so on and so forth until they reach the level of Senior Healthcare Assistant. Perhaps someone with more understanding of this will help. I do know that we are taught about abuse, moving and handling (something which I am training in tomorrow actually) and so on. But this post has left me SEETHING with anger - even I as a new Healthcare Assistant would have been able to give you a hell of a lot more information about the patient than this idiot. Although when I first started I wasn't informed that I needed to read the Care Plans and that the chap in Room 40 was HIV positive. Picture me with new cut on my hand rubbing E45 onto his skin without gloves... Despite this, the Care Home I work at is one of the better ones, I promise you. We actually give a damn about the patients, their welfare, their state of mind etc. We have a few residents with bedsores but for the most part they are caused by stints in hospital rather than a lack of airflow mattresses or a turning chart on our part. We are all genuinely upset when a resident passes on, gets ill or is in serious pain. We never ever leave patients unwashed, in dirty clothes, wearing a t-shirt as an incontinence pad (as Tom once witnessed I believe) or without food. We get hauled up in front of Matron for forgetting to fill in fluid charts on time, so I can imagine she would take a very dim view of anyone as frankly dense as this girl. I personally try to chatter as much as I can to residents as many of them have no stimulation at all, especially if they are bedridden, as do many of my colleagues. They tend to have interesting stories to tell from their lives (a road near where I live used to be a storage place for bombs and tanks, and an unexploded Doodlebug is still resting in the hill near Grange Farm) if only people would take the time to listen. But the problem is we don't have the time to listen for very long, as we're so understaffed that we have to run around like headless chickens trying to keep the residents comfortable and well looked after as is their right. My point is that some Carers and some Care Homes are not as bad as this. Some of us do care!! :)