I once rode down a crowded afternoon elevator with the CEO of a managed care company. “It must be 5:01,” he commented wryly. I heard a measure of scorn for his employees’ lack of dedication to the job. What I saw was a group of people fleeing from utterly uninspiring and unappreciated work.
Ahhh. A new year. It’s time for a fresh start, the chance to take life in a different direction. Whatever our roles in long-term care, there are steps each of us can take to enhance the way we treat each other and to have a positive impact on workplace culture.
Increasing staff stability, adopting a customer satisfaction questionnaire, reducing unintended healthcare outcomes, reducing hospital readmissions, improving discharges to the community, and adopting functional outcome measurements are the focus of the next round of quality improvement for the American Health Care Association.
Nearly 18% of new nurses leave their first job within a year, according to a study in Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice.
I was speaking to a group of certified nursing assistant during a session on turnover. The meeting was a hoot, and one CNA in particular shouted, “You are right! You are SO right!” I felt validated by her excitement after I noted how we often run off new nursing assistants by the way we treat them. But then it went bad.
After stealthily observing long-term care professionals in the wild for the past 15 years or so, I’ve come to see you as a perplexing and elusive study in contrasts. Perhaps you haven’t noticed me. I’ve been conducting my research from a camouflaged duck blind in the lobby.
For years, eldercare providers have been required to ensure that staff members attend in-service trainings to remain licensed to work at a community. And for equally as long a time, managers and supervisors have struggled to remind staff to attend these trainings.
Fourteen long-term care facilities in Pennsylvania dramatically increased their staff flu vaccination rate by having a regional pharmacy take over the process, according to a report issued Thursday by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHQR).
Cynicism and “emotional exhaustion” are the strongest predictors of nursing home administrator turnover, according to doctoral research by a former administrator. Misaligned personal and corporate values also lead to turnover.
The turnover rate in long-term care is a very significant problem, so I dug into the research about it. Some of the findings were shocking. Others were simply very disappointing. Here’s what I found, and what can be done to improve conditions.
