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Nursing Homes Implement the
Career Development Series
Caregivers Corner November 2001
Brandywine Employees take part in a teambuilding exercise. |
The social ecology of a long-term care center is a complex one. Words like �worker,� �staff,� �resident,� �customer,� �administrator,� �family,� �nurse,� �housekeeper� are among the multitudinous roles being lived out and played out in every long term care center. Every individual has a particular set of obligations and responsibilities, expectations, duties and courtesies with regard to the people in each of the other roles. In any care environment that aspires to be a safe and humane dwelling for residents and their caregivers, the quality of life is closely bound to the quality of the relationships of all the people within. Into such a place, strangers come � and those strangers must become akin to friends � useful and productive friends � �where everybody knows your name� if the place is to be a healing and vibrant community. |
By offering its Career Development Series (CDS) the Institute is actively engaged in easing some of the challenges faced by new employees entering this complex working environment. With significant numbers of new hires being lost the first day, the first week and well into the first three months of employment, easing the transition for newcomers is of vital importance. CDS is a content-rich training program that emphasizes relationships and relational skills development for staff working in long term care. The program, consisting of a series of 13 training sessions, each two hours in length, is a useful tool for orienting newcomers during their first 90 days of employment to help them make sense of and navigate the many inherent complexities of their work. Pilot implementations of the program have proven equally helpful to incumbent employees to address issues of workplace morale and building team capacity.
Over the past year the Career Development Series has been introduced into 15 nursing homes located in Pennsylvania and Maryland that are part of Diakon Lutheran Ministries. The Institute helped the organization establish and begin piloting a series of programs known as �Diakon University.� that features CDS as the initial step in a multi-level career path of value-added education to increase staff retention, skills and knowledge base, and organizational commitment.
Institute instructors have also been busy piloting the program in four nursing centers in eastern Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey. Each center chose a slightly different implementation and group for participation.
 | Dorrance Manor in Kingston enrolled new nursing assistants, as did Brandywine Senior Care in Moorestown, New Jersey. |
| Towne Manor West in Norristown recruited their most experienced nursing assistants to participate, to emphasize and build the capacity of this core group as informal leaders. |
| Towne Manor East, also in Norristown, recruited leadership staff from nursing units as well as other department managers for participation. They found the educational sessions of particular benefit because these individuals rarely have the opportunity to train together and learn from one another. |
| Silver Lake Center in Bristol recruited both new and veteran line staff representing nursing, housekeeping, dietary and rehab departments. This enabled new workers to gain insight into the possibilities and constraints of each department and the latitude, coordination and especially cooperation needed to ensure timely integrated services. This group developed a deeper awareness, for example, of what �teamwork� means in the kitchen, and what �stress reductions� are needed among the physical therapists. |
| Four centers held weekly 2-hour training sessions over the course of thirteen weeks. One opted to compress course content into 6-hour training sessions delivered biweekly. |
�The career training program showed me other and better ways of going about my job � how to get along with my co-workers better and how to better help the residents that we work with. The most helpful lesson was the one on teamwork.� |
|
� Dorrance Manor Participant |
The Career Development Series is available now through a licensing arrangement for nursing centers that wish to deliver training using their own instructors. The Institute has held Train-the-Trainer seminars for staff developers and instructors in Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for the purpose of assisting another 45 nursing homes to effectively conduct this training for their employees. For more information contact the Institute�s Director of Caregiver Education.