“I can honestly say that I love being a Shahbaz, and so do my fellow Shahbazim,” Edna Hess told the senators at a July 23 U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing.

Hess worked for years as a CNA at the Lebanon Valley Brethren Home in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, becoming a Shahbaz (the Green House® name for direct-care workers) when the home converted to the Green House® model nine months ago. Since then, she told the committee, not a single Shahbaz has left. “This a big improvement over my facility’s 23 percent annual turnover rate for nursing assistants, and an even bigger improvement over the national turnover rate for nursing assistants, which I understand to be slightly over 70 percent per year.”

“The working life we now enjoy is very demanding, because we do cooking, cleaning and activities in addition to nursing care, but it is so much more fulfilling,” Hess added. “We are now able to do all of the ‘extras’ that we rarely had time for in the traditional nursing home. We can let an elder linger in a luxurious whirlpool bath because there is no time pressure to get onto the next bath. We can sit with the ladies and do manicures, or just chat on the patio with them while enjoying afternoon iced teas.”

The hearing was on person-centered care. It gathered seven witnesses to offer policy recommendations and first-hand accounts.  Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA, pictured) convened the hearing as background to the Promoting Alternatives to Nursing Homes Act, a bill he will introduce soon that would create a loan fund for establishing small house nursing home alternatives. 

It covered a lot of turf, from acute care to primary care to long-term care and including testimony about the need for better transitions between settings. But threaded throughout were eloquent references, many of them from the senators themselves, to the importance of direct-care workers and their relationships with the people they assist in delivering person-centered care.

“The movement toward person-centered care has been called a revolution,” said Senator Casey in his introductory remarks. “But though it is revolutionary and new in what we are doing, it is also a profound return to the bedrock values of respecting our older citizens and living the golden rule…. The solutions we’ll hear today are a win-win for everyone: they’re a win for older citizens, a win for those who provide the care, and a win for their families….

“They provide direct-care workers with long overdue respect and job satisfaction.”

Download testimony or watch the webcast of the two-hour hearing

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org