“Most of us hear about abuse in long-term care and we assume some evil person out there tried to take advantage of somebody vulnerable. But the truth is, we all have the potential to be abusive. You can have the best intentions and still be abusive without even knowing it,” says Heather Picotte, administrative manager for the Adult Abuse and Neglect Prevention (AANP) project.
“For instance, if you’re stressed because you’re caring for a family member who’s ill, and you go in to work and you’re trying to bathe someone who doesn’t want a bath, you might get frustrated and react badly. Or if someone doesn’t make it to work, so you have to care for more people, and you’re doing everything in a rush, you could do something abusive without even realizing it. Consumers can be abusive too. If you’re dealing with a family member who’s sick and you’re stressed out, you can take it out on the caregivers, or even your family member. And elders can become combative.
Continue reading ‘Free Training Materials Help Caregivers Prevent Abuse’
An online schedule from the IRS lets taxpayers know when to expect their economic stimulus checks to be sent. The schedule is based on the last two digits of your social security number. It could be a welcome boost in these hard economic times, but it will go only to those who have filed their federal tax returns for 2007.
Many direct-care workers are eligible for tax relief – not only in the form of the stimulus payment but also through the Earned Income Tax Credit. So if you are a direct-care worker who has not yet filed a federal tax return, you may want to do so. And if you know direct-care workers who may not have filed, pass on the word.
Elise Nakhnikian is PHI’s Senior Online Editor
Registration is still open for a March 27 webinar on Creating a Supportive Organizational Culture for DSPs. The webinar is the second in a six-part series on proven ways of reducing turnover among direct service professionals (DSPs). It was created by ANCOR, the University of Minnesota Research and Training Center on Community Living, and model agencies from across the country.For this month’s installment, Amy Hewitt of the University of Minnesota Research and Training Center on Community Living will be joined by a provider and a DSP. The three will discuss how supportive organizational cultures improve job satisfaction, performance, and turnover rates for DSPs. They’ll describe the characteristics of organizations that successfully find, keep, and empower DSPs. And they’ll outline the role of organizational leaders and strategies for building a successful organizational culture.
The webinar will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. EDT. The cost is $99 for ANCOR members and $198 for nonmembers. Recordings of each session in the series may also be purchased. To register, or to see the schedule of upcoming events in the series, go to ANCOR’s website. Registrations must be completed by March 24. Email jmccandless@ancor.org or call 703-535-7850, ext. 107 if you have questions.
Elise Nakhnikian is PHI’s Senior Online Editor
Direct-care workers participating in a Massachusetts grant program communicated significantly better after getting specialized training in English comprehension, clinical skills, and “soft skills” like communication, peer mentoring, and leadership. “Perhaps the most far-reaching outcome of ECCLI was an improvement in communication,” write Janice M. Heineman and colleagues in The Qualitative Evaluation of ECCLI (pdf), a research and evaluation brief from the Commonwealth Corporation. “It was reported in all organizations and directly affected all levels of personnel, clients/residents, and family members, as well as indirectly affecting operations and quality of care.”
As one nurse supervisor told the researchers: “Communication has improved a lot. I think CNAs don’t feel so much like, ‘You’re the nurse and we can’t contribute anything.’ They feel like, ‘I know there’s something wrong,’ and they’ll come to us more readily with that. And I think we are more receptive because we know they know more.”
Continue reading ‘Career Ladder Initiative Improves Communication, Care Quality’
Using a few agency nursing assistants to fill in as needed doesn’t seem to hurt care quality in nursing homes, but relying too heavily on them does, according to a report in Medical Care Research and Review. Homes that used more than 14 full-time equivalent (FTE) agency nursing assistants per 100 residents within the past year did worse on all 14 of the quality measures studied.
“Nurse Aide Agency Staffing and Quality of Care in Nursing Homes” is only the second study to look at agency staffing in nursing homes – and the first to focus on nursing assistants rather than licensed nurses. (A 2006 report found that facilities where more than 5 percent of the LPNs or RNs were temps had more deficiency citations.) The new study found the influence of nursing assistant agency staffing on care quality to be “pervasive and in many cases of significant magnitude.”
Continue reading ‘More Agency NAs, Less Care Quality’
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