Personal Care Attendant (“PCA”)

Personal Care Attendant (“PCAâ€)

Per Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH), this program permits a residential care facility to employ a trained Personal Care Attendant (“PCAâ€) to perform defined resident care procedures that do not require the skill or training required for a Certified Nurse Aide (“CNAâ€).

Scope

The PCA position is a temporary accommodation made by the State of Indiana to address work increases and staffing shortages caused by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The position and its attendant training are implementations by the Indiana State Department of Health (“ISDHâ€) of the purposes and directives of Governor Eric Holcomb’s March 6, 2020 “Declaration of Public Health Emergency for Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak†(the “Executive Orderâ€). The PCA position will be authorized only while the Executive Order remains in effect, plus any additional time afterward the ISDH deems necessary to facilitate providers’ orderly resumption of normal staffing.

Personal Requirements

• A candidate for training must be at least eighteen (18) years of age. There are no minimum educational requirements.
• A PCA who completes training and is employed by a facility must satisfy the requirements for “other unlicensed employees†set out in IC 16-28-13, “Criminal History of Nurse Aides and Other Unlicensed Employees.â€

Training Standards

• Completion of all training and documentation requirements for PCA candidates is the ultimate responsibility of the training/hiring facility.

• Any licensed comprehensive care facility may train PCA candidates without regard to any current NATCEP training ban.

• The PCA training course must be taught by an instructor confirmed by the facility to have

• completed all training necessary to be a Nurse Aide Program Instructor for the ISDH Nurse Aide

Program.

• Training must consist of five (5) hours of classroom teaching and three (3) hours of supervised simulation in which the PCA candidate exhibits competency in all areas of training.

• Upon the completion of classroom instruction, PCA candidates must simulate and demonstrate competency in all required care procedures. Under observation by the instructor, PCA candidates will first simulate procedures while working together in pairs or teams. Next, the instructor (or the instructor with the assistance of a licensed nurse) must observe each candidate’s simulation of required skills and document the candidate’s competency.

• Upon completion of the eight (8) hour course, the facility must submit the names of all PCA candidates who complete training and demonstrate required competencies to the ISDH Nurse Aide Registry. When requested by the ISDH, the facility will update the names of all PCAs working in the facility at the time of the request.

• The facility must fully notify its certified and licensed staff members that PCAs have a limited scope of permissible work, and detail what duties may not be delegated to PCAs. If the facility learns that any PCA is performing duties outside the limited scope of permissible work, it must immediately intervene, stop the PCA, and reassign those duties to authorized personnel. PCAs shall report to the facility’s Charge Nurse/Manager on Duty.