Training Personal Care Aides to deliver quality care

We’re excited around the aQuire Training offices. We just received our private school license from the Oregon Department of Education to offer the Personal Care Aide Certification course (and some other pre-hire courses) though our newest website identity, the Institute for Professional Care Education (www.IPCed.com).

Why is that so cool? Because with our school license we can now train workers who are job seekers and help prepare a pool of more qualified, trained workers. These individuals may be able to get workforce development funds to pay for their training, too – a clear win/win all the way around.

This matters to you if you hire caregivers. Hiring someone who has invested the time, initiative and money in a comprehensive 40 hour course means you’re hiring someone more likely to succeed and to love their job as a caregiver.

This matters to you if your loved one needs a caregiver. Ensuring that the caregivers providing care to your loved one are comprehensively trained and certified is an important step to feeling confident in the quality of care your loved one is receiving.

This matters to you if you’re focused on building a strong reputation for quality care. Demonstrating training above and beyond the minimum requirements is one way to set your organization ahead of the pack. And being ahead means business success, any way you slice it.

This matters to you if you’re involved in training, too. We are actively working to develop strong training partnerships with others in their training field to help reach as many people as possible.

This is one way we can reach out and improve the standard of care that is delivered, every single day, to people who live and work in our state, our town and our homes.

For details about the comprehensive 40 hour online Personal Care Certification Course see www.IPCed.com. Contact Wendy@aQuiretraining.com for information on pricing advantages for bulk purchases of this Certification Course or to set up a personal web tour of the course.

Employee satisfaction and resident quality of life connected

The hardest job in the world is hiring good managers. Good managers not only set the tone for the entire operation, they help ensure the two keys: compliance and quality.

My InnerView’s recent report published as a supplement to Provider’s October 2009 issue, emphasized this point over and over in the results of their latest surveys on quality care in assisted living. Good managers – managers who care, listen and set clear guidelines – results in greater employee satisfaction and improved resident quality of life.

Not surprisingly, the two outcomes are closely connected, as well. When employee satisfaction is high, resident quality of life increases at the same rate.

Supporting an employee’s career earns high marks as a measure of management strength; at the same time, only 22% of the 12,000 individuals surveyed rated the training provided to them as “excellent” – the weakest of the 4 areas the survey covered.

Nursing and personal care staff had the lowest overall job satisfaction rating, with just over 70% of the individuals in these job descriptions expressing happiness with their job, compared to over 80% of housekeepers and more than 90% of administration who were satisfied with their jobs.

Considering that these are the crucial workers who provide the care delivery to the clients, this is certainly an area for focus and improvement. These are the people who deliver the care, and in turn determine the happiness of clients and families.

Since top consumer issues are the care and competency of staff, this is clearly a management issue.

Caring, listening and building the strongest employee team possible – these are no small challenges that today’s assisted living manager faces. Seems like it’s more important than ever to focus on leadership.

Let’s collaborate

There are two kinds of people in the world: those looking for something to do, and those working harder than ever just trying to keep up with the work on their plate.

Overly simplistic, I know, but lately that’s how it feels to me. Those who aren’t working are desperate for a job and something meaningful to do to fill their day.

Those of us who are working, are somehow busier than ever. We’re not complaining, of course; we’re counting our blessings to be busy and bringing home a paycheck.

At the same time, we’re running a little leaner staff than usual, meaning more work lands on the desks of fewer people (did I mention how busy I am lately?). We’re trying to start new business units, expand our sources of revenue and, of course, figure out how to facebook, twitter, and network the heck out of everything we’re busy doing.

Some of it we’re doing really well. I see companies and organizations that are more innovative, creative and engaged than ever before. They’re launching new programs and adding services. They’re involved in writing grants and getting grants, and in helping others progress forward in this profession.

Every once in a while, though, I see areas where, instead of collaborating, we try to hoard our piece of the market. We duplicate and overlap efforts, resulting in more work; less payoff.

Last week I was in Phoenix and had the opportunity to visit a Catholic Charities center. Just a few years ago they built the Caregiver House, a small home designed to be fully accessible – and designed for teaching people how best to provide care in someone else’s home.

The bathrooms have innovative assistive devices; the bedrooms are equipped with the typical wheelchair, walker and other devices you might find in a home where care is being given someone elderly or disabled. The living room has lots of extra tables and chairs for teaching and presentations.

It’s a beautiful home and a wonderful environment for teaching people to provide care at home. And the best part of all is that the organization opens the House to groups throughout the community to use for their own teaching. They willingly and graciously share their wonderful resource, even though they provide training as a big part of their own program.

We’re all trying to do just a little more with just a little less these days. I suggest that maybe it’s time for us all to look for ways to collaborate rather than compete just a little more often.

Last week I came home excited and energized by the prospect of working in collaboration with others, instead of exhausted and burdened by the load on my own desk.

It’s a great feeling. Can we collaborate, and lighten your load a bit today?

Making sense of the business of senior care

Yesterday the owner of a large, multi-location care company said to me, “One thing you don’t realize is that when we train people, they think they should get paid more. It actually hurts us to train our employees.”

He went on to share their corporate-wide turnover rate, which is high enough that I’d personally refuse to share – or lie – if someone asked me for that information.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this comment, and the spirit behind it. It is deeply troubling to me to think that this attitude exists in senior care today. I understand that some corporate level individuals are first and foremost business people, but this is a business issue, too.

The cost of employee turnover is well documented – and it’s substantial.

The value of an engaged workforce is also well documented – and it’s even more substantial. According to Gallup, a company with a highly engaged workforce (people who “work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company.”) results in highly engaged clients (the ones who couldn’t image life without your product or service). Overall, the net gain to the company is a bottom line, real dollar benefit of well over 300% more revenue than the company without engaged employees.

Which part of this isn’t making sense, even to the corporate person solely focused on money?

What concerns me more is what is happening to the many thousands of employees who work for companies like this. They probably start out passionate about their jobs. My guess is that they quickly realize that the company doesn’t value them enough to provide them with adequate training – and they leave.

Who is hurt the most? The vulnerable client who is dependant on that individual for their care.

Imagine your mother being cared for by a different person every few days, and you’ll be imagining what people are living across this country.

No one is there long enough to get to know the history – the story – of your mother.

No one is there long enough to know her well enough to detect when something’s just not right, and act quickly to avoid a major problem.

Having both my mother and my mother-in-law receiving care lately, I know first hand how helpless and dependent even the family feels on the individuals providing care. Some days, you simply pray and hope for the best, knowing that there’s nothing more you can do.

And then you’re thankful every single day when you finally get a caregiver – or two or three – who genuinely care about your loved one. Who take the time to listen, to learn their story, and who grieve with you when they pass.

We have an awesome level of trust and responsibility as senior care providers. I have to think that someday, in some way, we’ll each be called to account for how well we met that trust and responsibility; how well we improved the lives of the most vulnerable people we served; how well, in the end, we understood the very mission of our company.

In the end, maybe it isn’t just about the money.

Raise public awareness of quality care

I was at a meeting this morning of a community group involved in programs and services for seniors. The first speaker on the agenda was the head of a state agency. The topic was mental health services to seniors. One of the group members asked about services for people living in nursing facilities who might be suffering from depression. The speaker’s response began, “Well, who wouldn’t be depressed living in a place like that.”

That comment – just a reflexive, throw-away line – struck me hard.

Many of us have dedicated our careers to providing quality care for seniors living in “places like that” – nursing facilities and assisted living facilities providing care to elders.

We’ve spent hours training our caregivers to be gentle, loving and compassionate.

We’ve listened to families share their angst at having to move mom or dad from the family home, but having no other choices.

We’ve sat at bedsides – during our time off – reading to a dying resident and sharing tears with families who are grieving the loss of a loved one.

When my own beloved mother-in-law died recently she had lived in the care community less than 2 months. Yet the young man who cared for her most days cried as hard as any member of the family when she died.

Not one of us felt that it was inevitable that she be depressed.

Not one of us ever referred to the care setting as “a place like that.”

And yet so many in the public still have that perception: that a nursing home – and often any care setting – is to be avoided like the plague. It’s the last choice for any person, and be prepared to be very depressed if that’s where you end up living out your days.

We’ve come a long way personalizing care; but we’ve got a long ways to go. We need to continue to show the people in our community – including those running agencies for the benefit of people like our residents and clients – what we do, up close.

We need to continue to shout about the incredible way seniors are cared for, and the options available to them that not only support daily living but also enhance the quality of life for residents.

I feel sad for the speaker this morning if her mother or father should ever need nursing care. But most of all, I see this as a call to action to those of us providing care to let the world around us know that it’s not a depressing place to be. That life, right to the end, can be rich and meaningful, and that it’s our mission to help make it so for the people in our care.

If you’re interested in learning how online training can help you build an extraordinary team, contact us at info@aquiretraining.com. Ask about our “6 months’ free” offer, designed to get you going now, even if the money’s tight.

Census and the economy

From the word on the street, if your census is strong consider yourself lucky.

It’s not enough that the economy and poor housing market is driving people to care for their own family members rather than seek care elsewhere. We’re also caring for a market sector that has other inherent issues, namely longevity. Not to be indelicate, but our residents are vulnerable. And, it seems, we lose them in groups.

My mother in law had excellent end of life care recently in a brand new assisted living community. She was the first person in the apartment, and the caregivers were incredibly kind and attentive. They only had a few residents – how few I don’t really know. What I do know is that on the day my mother-in-law died, two other residents also passed. I’m guessing that may have constituted as much as 25% of their occupancy, in one fell swoop.

In this situation, it’s the small details that count. For our family, the attention to detail was incredible. The staff not only were attentive and caring, they openly grieved with us at the loss of our mother. One of the employees even gave the eulogy at the memorial service – and it was absolutely pitch perfect.

Were we satisfied customer? Absolutely. We’ll tell everyone we can about the fabulous care provided to our family. We’ll tell you what a great company Leisure Care is, and how happy we are with the care provided by their team.

We’ve had other experiences with our family elders. We’ll tell you about those, too – and warn you away from some communities that didn’t meet our basic expectations, let alone exceed them.

Benjamin Pearce, author of the excellent book “Managing Senior Living Communities” and a member of our instructor team just developed a course on Customer Service for managers for CEU credit. Ben says, “Quality is simply the difference between what you expect and what you get. When you get more than you expect, you perceive that you’ve gotten something of value.”

If you feel you or your managers could use a little tuning up in this area, check out this course on our EasyCEU website.

With everything else working against us having a strong census today, customer service is one area we can control and improve.

Developing a training vision for success

Recently the aQuire team was hired as an advisor to a new family caregiver project being developed out of New York City. One of the developers of the project is a man who serves on the board for an East Coast University’s school of business. He tells the story of a recent meeting where the board’s agenda was to “vision the school in 10 years.” My new friend, Barry, begins by raising his hand and saying, “In 10 years we know that most students will take at least a portion of their classes online.”

Barry was met by total silence. After an awkward couple of minutes, one of the school’s administrators said, “Well, that’s an interesting perspective but not really how we prefer to teach.”

Barry responded, appropriately, “It’s not going to matter as much how ‘we prefer to teach’ as it matters how our students prefer to learn. And evidence today shows that most will prefer at least a portion of their training online.”

He is right, you know. It doesn’t really matter how we prefer to teach – it does matter how the people we’re trying to teach prefer to learn.

When it comes to employees and training, one thing is clear: traditional approaches to training are one of the least enjoyable ways our staff prefers to learn.

Imagine if you were required to attend a training session on your day off – or in the middle of the night. For many of our employees that’s exactly what we’re asking them to do to simply attend regularly scheduled inservices. It’s not only a poor choice for many, it’s an ineffective way to ensure that every person, every shift, enterprise-wide is equally trained to deliver quality service – the bedrock of an organization’s survival.

Today, we need to deliver training dynamically, with new information delivered to every single employee in the most efficient, effective way possible. We need to consider, as well, how our employees want to learn, and adapt our training to technology that is rapidly becoming the standard rather than the exception.

We need to grasp the vision for the future as we develop our programs today, or be left behind in a rapidly changing, complex economy.


[Interested in starting an online training program for your company? Contact an aQuire representative today to learn how you can get up to 6 months free when you start your program now.]