Skills
Home Health Aide Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in home health aides, and how to build and show them.
Home Health Aides need technical skills such as personal care and hygiene assistance, safe transfers and fall prevention, and vital signs measurement, plus people skills like compassion and patience and dependability. They also use tools such as Gait belts and transfer boards and Shower chairs and grab bars.
Technical (hard) skills
- Personal care and hygiene assistance
- Safe transfers and fall prevention
- Vital signs measurement
- Meal preparation for special diets
- Infection control
- Accurate visit documentation
People (soft) skills
- Compassion and patience
- Dependability
- Observation skills
- Respect for privacy and dignity
Tools, equipment and technology
- Gait belts and transfer boards
- Shower chairs and grab bars
- Blood pressure cuffs and thermometers
- Pill organizers
- Walkers, canes and wheelchairs
- Electronic visit verification (EVV) apps
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how home health aides put their skills to work:
- How to help a client transfer from bed to wheelchair
- How to give a bed bath
- How to take and record a client’s blood pressure
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Personal care and hygiene assistance” and “Safe transfers and fall prevention.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “compassion and patience,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as Home health aide certificate near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our home health aide glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Home Health Aide training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.