April 2000

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Caregivers Corner April, 2000 Education for the Frontline
The Institute for Caregiver Education has joined forces with Penn State Mont Alto's Continuing Education Office at the Chambersburg Mall, bringing together the combined resources of our not-for-profit workforce development organization and the higher education community. Our mission -- to explore needs existing locally among long term care providers, and to respond with programming that addresses the challenges of recruiting and retaining adequately trained caregivers. The alliance kicked off this fall with informal meetings to which we invited healthcare providers from Franklin, Fulton, and Adams counties. Beginning with dialogue about common training needs around the table, the concept of a unified coalition of providers was proposed. Many of the local organizations have a small, but steady stream of new hires needing basic employment preparation at any given time. The numbers of trainees are often too small to conduct frequently needed training cost effectively. Bringing the organizations together under the umbrella of a Cumberland Valley Eldercare Coalition provides a solution to this obstacle and has added benefits. Homes in the same geographic cluster can decrease the time interval between training programs, share instructional costs, and reduce time commitments of overburdened staff educators. Responding to the coalition's employee recruitment and training needs, the Institute and Penn State began jointly piloting programs in February through the Continuing Education Office at the Chambersburg Mall. The focus of initial training is on the Nursing Assistant position. We introduced a three-week course that combines career awareness and job-readiness with topics such as medical terminology and functions of the human body to prepare individuals with no previous healthcare background to successfully compete in the nurse aide training program. The Nurse Aide Training course will follow directly on the heels of the "prep" course and includes both classroom and clinical instruction. Students who successfully complete the four-week State-approved program are awarded a training certificate that permits them to take Pennsylvania's Nurse Aide Competency Exam required for their continued employment. Following up the need for retention-based programming, we will introduce the Nursing Assistant Specialist for Elders (NASE) certificate program this spring, the focus of which is to provide skills enhancement for nurse aides with at least six months job experience. NASE teaches advanced competencies in restorative and therapeutic care and heightens understanding of and sensitivity to the special needs of elders. The second course required for this certificate program will be offered in fall 2000.

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