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Millions of older adults and people living with disabilities rely on the direct care workforce, and the numbers are growing at an enormous rate every single day. Sadly, we have undervalued the importance of the direct care workforce and ill prepared the critical need to provide quality of life and quality of care training. It's time to change the paradigm.
According to estimates from the National Alliance for Caregiving, during the past year, 65.7 million Americans (or 29 percent of the adult U.S. adult population involving 31 percent of all U.S. households) served as family caregivers for an ill or disabled relative. That is 65.7 million family caregivers who are desperately needing education, training, support and help with finding available resources. We must do a better job as these numbers are increasing drastically with our aging population.
I have to be direct in asking - isn't this every elder care community's goal? After all, we should be in the compassion business, and sustainability is the hot topic today. Creating a sustainable culture of compassion - makes sense right?
High staff turnover in long-term care is certainly not a recent phenomenon. Going back to the 1970s studies pointed to average turnover rates for registered nurses (RNs), licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) and certified nursing assistants (CNAs) ranging between 55% - 75%. With growing demands for these professions as our aging population explodes, many providers are reporting upwards of 100% turnover. Many factors need to be addressed - one being how we are preparing this workforce to work with the growing numbers of older adults with dementia? Leaders have many options for dementia training. What do we hear most often? Keep it simple and engage the learner!
