The patient care assistant program: the nursing profession's and a community college's response to educating...

Preparing unlicensed assistive personnel for work in hospitals is one of the major challenges facing the nursing profession in the 1990s. Continued debate prevails over who should educate these health care workers and what content should be included in the curriculum. The 516-hour course described in this article was designed by nursing professionals to educate and train individuals to function as unlicensed assistive personnel in the acute care setting. The program takes place in a junior college and consists of learning activities in the classroom, skills laboratory, nursing home, and acute care hospital.