title: Tapping the potential.
abstract: Scan McCarthy looks smart and confident as he goes about his work on a busy medical ward at King's College Hospital, London. The patients call him 'nurse', quite unaware rhat he is one of a new breed of NHS stalf: a health care assistant. Sean left a career in retail management to do his training with Camberwell Health Authority, which already has 65 health care assistants in post.