Comments on: Why Direct-Care Workers Leave

By: Harry Dispensa

Harry Dispensa — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:44:14 +0000

Mentoring is a great idea not only in the beginning of ones career but throughout. Providing a Registered Apprenticeship program to Nursing Assistants and other Direct Care occupations has been shown to reduce turnover and increase the workers job satisfaction. Recruitment and retention come at a high cost. Implementation of apprenticeship programs has helped employers retain employees and save money. Investing in improving worker skills is less costly than recruitment and apprentices appriciate the willingness of employers to invest in them by paying for training, providing incremental wage increases as skills improve and offering opportunities for them to advance to higher positions. That reduced employee turnover means that employers experience cost savings; they do not have to constantly recruit and train new employees for the same positions. The Apprenticeship model is a strategy to help health care providers deliver the best possible care to patients and residents. Employees are given better training, which directly affects patient care. Additionally employers are making an investment in apprentices by paying them increased wages as their skills improve and, thus, providing concrete pathways to advance in their careers. This all contributes to better employees who provide better care to patients.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:19:43 +0000

My company has a “group” that has been meeting once every other month to study the retention issue and find some solutions. One of them was the “Peer Mentoring” idea. It was written about in the company newspaper (that hardly anyone reads, and just ends up being used in lieu of scratch paper for writing down phone messages) as starting in August. Hopefully this will at least slow some of the turnover.

The real problem behind my facility and all it’s turnover is the lack of leadership. At last count, there has been five different supervisors that have come and gone in the last eighteen months. Due to the inconsistent enforcement of company standards, we have lost most of our experienced staff.

I am crossing my fingers that this new plan may work a little bit.

By: Elise Nakhnikian

Elise Nakhnikian — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:51:19 +0000

Peer mentoring definitely helps reduce facility-level turnover. And it does seem like it might lead some people to stay in the profession who would otherwise give up on it, though that's just a guess. PHI has a peer mentoring curriculum for workers in home- and community-based care, since most programs seem to be designed for nursing homes. It's based on a program that's been in use for several years at CHCA, the home care agency that we grew out of, and I know they find it effective. Their turnover is relatively low, too, though it's hard to say how much of that is because of peer mentoring...

By: Mike g

Mike g — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:16:12 +0000

Question: Would having a mentor for the first three months of hire help with retention? It appears that new NA’s are thrown into a heavy work environment and don’t know how to deal with it. Perhaps a mentor could help with this?? Any thoughts?