Assistant in Nursing
An Assistant in Nursing provides direct personal care and support to patients in hospitals, aged care facilities, community health settings, or disability services under the supervision of registered nurses.
What this job is
An Assistant in Nursing provides direct personal care and support to patients in hospitals, aged care facilities, community health settings, or disability services under the supervision of registered nurses. They perform routine hygiene, mobility, and comfort tasks, monitor basic vital signs, and assist with activities of daily living while maintaining patient dignity and reporting changes in patient condition to nursing staff.
Are employers advertising this role?
Rising, up 45.8% over 5 years
Counted across a group of similar roles. These are three-month rolling averages of online job advertisements, not filled positions.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia, Internet Vacancy Index.
Day-to-day
Assist patients with personal hygiene tasks including showering, bathing, toileting, and grooming while maintaining privacy and dignity. Help patients with mobility and repositioning using appropriate manual handling techniques and assistive equipment to prevent pressure injuries. Perform basic observations including temperature, pulse, respiration, and blood pressure using standard equipment and report abnormal findings to registered nurses. Support patients with eating and drinking, including assisting those with swallowing difficulties and monitoring nutritional intake. Change and launder bed linen, patient clothing, and incontinence pads following infection control and hygiene protocols. Empty, clean, and document output from catheters, urinals, bedpans, and ostomy bags in accordance with aged care or hospital procedures. Assist registered nurses with patient admission, discharge, and transfer procedures including gathering personal items and documentation. Communicate with patients and families to understand their needs, provide reassurance, and report concerns about patient behaviour, mood, or condition changes.
Who does this now
About 40,200 people worked in this occupation across Australia at the 2021 Census.
Is it steady
Patient transport, theatre preparation and ward support. A hands-on role that so far looks less exposed to AI.
What this role asks for
Certificate II or III (ABS skill level 4)
Can employers fill these jobs
Employers hiring for this occupation were generally able to find suitable applicants in 2025. This measures how hard employers found it to fill jobs. It is not a count of jobs, and it does not say whether the occupation is growing.
Requirements
The standard entry pathway requires a Certificate II or III (ABS skill level 4). Specific qualification requirements vary by employer and state. Some employers may accept equivalent experience. Check yourcareer.gov.au for available courses and dewr.gov.au/skills-reform/free-tafe for subsidised training options.
The honest hard part
The work is physically demanding and emotionally draining. You'll deal with bodily fluids, aggressive or confused patients, and repetitive heavy lifting that risks back injury despite training. Rostering includes nights, weekends, and on-call shifts.
Where the jobs are
Jobs concentrate in metro areas where hospitals and aged care facilities cluster. Practically speaking, regional areas have fewer positions and often struggle to fill them. Aged care homes are everywhere, but quality varies. Remote work doesn't exist in this role.
Pay
Published for ANZSCO unit group 4233, the wider group this job sits in, not for this job on its own.
This is the median for full-time employees who are not managers and are paid at the adult rate, before tax and salary sacrifice. It is a guide to what the work pays, not a wage rate.
Source: ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.
Skills
- Accept own accountabilitycore
- Active Listeningcore
- Advise on healthcare users' informed consentcore
- Attention to Detailcore
- Case Note Documentationcore
- Confidentiality and Privacy Compliancecore
- Cultural Awareness and Sensitivitycore
- Empathy and Emotional Intelligencecore
- Health Terminology Literacycore
- Incident Reportingcore
- Policy and Procedure Adherencecore
- Professional Boundaries Maintenancecore
- Team Collaborationcore
- Time Management and Prioritisationcore
- Verbal Communicationcore
- Adaptability and Flexibility
- Continuous Learning and Upskilling
- Data Entry and Accuracy
- Health Record Administration
- Inclusive Practice
- Multitasking
- Participant or Client Advocacy
- Risk Identification
- Trauma-Informed Communication
Which of these do you have?
Tick the ones you haveCommon questions
Sources
- ABS OSCA 2024, occupation definition and task statements
- ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.
- ABS, 2021 Census of Population and Housing based on usual place of residence (Custom Report). OSCA Experimental Estimates.
Role data is drawn from official Australian Government sources, and each figure names where it comes from. Where a role is not in the ABS classification, the page shows no government figures for it. Data may not reflect every local variation.
What Assistant in Nursing workers move into, from ten years of tax records.
Last updated: 30 October 2026
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