Effective Workplace & Caregiving Practices
High rates of turnover and vacancies among direct-care workers are commonplace across long-term care settings. As staff rosters have become more difficult to fill, providers have become increasingly concerned about their ability to deliver high-quality care. After all, nursing aides and home health aides deliver 80 percent of all hands-on care and assistance in long-term care settings. When agencies and facilities are short staffed, they are also short on experience, leaving clients or residents without the essential support they need.
For over a decade, PHI has been working with home care agencies and nursing homes to develop innovative strategies to recruit, train, and retain direct-care workers and ensure the delivery of high-quality person-centered care. Through that work, agencies affiliated with PHI have reduced turnover rates and strengthened quality of care.
Effective Practices
- Recruitment - A rigorous, multi-layered recruitment process that relies heavily on establishing strong recruitment partnerships.
- Training - An innovative approach to entry-level training that uses learner-centered teaching techniques and incorporates modules on communication and problem-solving skills into the standard health care and clinical curriculum.
- Peer mentoring and career advancement opportunities for direct-care workers.
- Workforce supports - Including on-the-job training, coaching supervision and supportive services.
- Person-centered caregiving practices that respect the relationship between the caregiver and the person for whom he or she is providing support and assistance.
