Brenda Nachtway
I heard about some exciting “best practices” last month at a conference hosted by the Pennsylvania Center for Health Careers. The title was Redefining Excellence: Pennsylvania’s Best Healthcare Practices, and it fit. The presenters at the workshops I went to about direct care work really care about their workers and know how to make their jobs better.
At one called “We CARE-CNAs’ Impact on Management of Care Delivery,” two vice presidents from Redstone Highlands talked about the education, skills building, and opportunities for career advancement they provide to their CNAs. Redstone Highlands is a nonprofit retirement community with three campuses. They have a career advancement lattice – not a career ladder – that lets CNAs get an increase in pay and a new job title for acquiring special skills without having to move “up” to a position as a licensed nurse.
Nursing assistants advance by becoming peer mentors, taking on extra responsibilities like preparing all the next day’s paperwork, scheduling, and teaming up experienced aides with new hires. The presenters stressed the fact that this is not just a feel-good program: the work their senior CNAs do is vital to the operation of the organization. Since the program started, they said, their turnover has been very low.
I was also impressed by Ruth Mirin, the Director of Nursing at The Sarah A. Todd Memorial Home, who talked about the nurse aide class they started to increase the nurse aide workforce in southcentral Pennsylvania. They trained the workers so they could pass the certification test, but that’s not all. They also provided – at no cost to the workers — child care, transportation, and whatever else was needed to pull in good people who would make wonderful direct care workers.
The outcomes she described were amazing. Some of the people they helped couldn’t even speak English at first. But after the program got them the help they needed and they became direct care workers, she said, they turned out to be the best of the best.
Brenda Nachtway
Direct Care Worker Specialist
Direct Care Alliance
that’s incredible.