“Most of the people that get into this work are women, and they have kids,” says Patti Green of her fellow direct-care workers. “A lot of them are single. They need to earn a decent hourly rate of pay, and they need to have health insurance.”

“That would attract more people, and then if they had the good screening and training we could weed out those that don’t really have a heart for it.”

“They listened to me – I was kind of surprised”
A natural leader, Green has become an expert on the state of direct-care work in America by running what amount to online break rooms for direct-care workers. Nursing Assistant Resources on the Web, the blog she started 10 years ago and now runs with the help of two other direct-care workers, is a trove of free articles, thoughtful blog posts, FAQs, and useful links. And at NursingAssistant@yahoogroups.com, the online community Green launched around the same time and still moderates, 750-plus members engage in a lively exchange of ideas, asking questions, venting frustrations, and offering each other affirmation and support.

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PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Vermont Legislative Study Tackles Direct Care Workforce

Study Reveals that Wages, Health Coverage, Training are Keys to Retention

Montpelier, VT, March 25, 2008 –An impending health care crisis has not gone unnoticed in the Green Mountain State. The number of Vermonters age 65 and older is expected to double between 2005 and 2030 while the direct-care workforce continues to decline. A new study funded by the Department of Disabilities, Aging & Independent Living, The Community of Vermont Elders, and PHI has made nine recommendations to help avert this crisis. The Legislative Study of the Direct Care Workforce in Vermont reveals that wages, benefits and training are critical to retaining workers in this field. Continue Reading

An interview in Long-Term Living (formerly Nursing Homes Long Term Care Management) describes what Online Editor John Oberlin calls “a cooperative, flexible, and resourceful program that would directly address … barriers to sustained employment.”

Employees of two of the participating organizations discuss how the Opportunity Partnership & Empowerment Network (OPEN) program, a collaboration by eight providers in Kent County, Michigan, has improved direct-care worker retention. A coordinator whose salary is shared by the employers helps workers identify and overcome barriers that are reducing their ability to be effective at work.

The program saves his organization three or four times what it costs, says one of the providers. “And that doesn’t even talk about the quality. When you retain employees, then your quality of care has gone up tremendously.”

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org

In yet another sign of how fast direct-care work is growing as a job category, only five kinds of work employed more women last year.

According to a U.S. Department of Labor chart titled 20 Leading Occupations of Employed Women, there were 1.659 million female nursing, psychiatric and home health aides in the U.S. in 2007, making up 88.3 percent of the total 1.879 million workers in that category. Their median weekly wages were $416.

Secretaries and administrative assistants topped the list at 3.289 million, followed by registered nurses at 2.411 million. Also topping the list were elementary and middle school teachers, cashiers, and retail saleswomen.

The direct-care worker category outstripped waitresses (1.464 million), receptionists and information clerks (1.340 million) maids and housekeeping cleaners (1.273 million) and childcare workers (1.269 million).

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org

According to a new study, better wages and benefits are critical to retaining direct-care workers in Vermont, yet a third of the state’s direct-care workers have employer-sponsored health insurance and only half of the workers surveyed expected to receive a raise.

Legislative Study of the Direct Care Workforce in Vermont also reports that only 42 percent of the 1,700 direct-care workers surveyed received formal job training, although workers who receive professional training remain in their jobs significantly longer.

The report makes nine recommendations to strengthen the state’s direct-care workforce: Continue Reading

Differences in ethnicity and cultural background matter to nursing assistants, and managers who act as if they don’t exist create an uncomfortable work environment, according to a recent study of 135 nursing assistants from four New England nursing homes.”

“Country of origin and racio-ethnicity: Are there differences in perceived organizational cultural competency and job satisfaction among nursing assistants in long-term care?” finds that the main factor influencing job satisfaction is “perception of organizational cultural competence.” Non-white workers saw their facilities as less culturally competent and their coworkers’ attitudes toward their race and culture as more negative than their white colleagues did.

The authors cite a model of cultural competence that divides the development of cultural competence into six stages, which begin with denial of any differences and end with integration of diverse views, behaviors, and values into the majority culture. The nursing homes they studied, they hypothesize, are in the third stage, minimizing differences “as the minority group become more like the majority group.”

They recommend several things long-term care managers can do to create a comfortable work environment for employees of different races and cultures. Among their suggestions: fostering better cross-cultural communication and putting policies and training in place so employees know how to respond if a coworker or resident is being treated unfairly because of race or culture.

The article ran in the October/December 2007 issue of Health Care Management Review. It’s free to subscribers only; others must pay $29.95.

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org