Archive for February, 2010
CNA Orientation: Time Well Spent
Maintaining a fully staffed team of CNAs can be a challenge. Let’s say you’re short staffed and rushing to fill those job vacancies. You take the time to advertise for CNAs, interview prospective employees and complete the entire hiring process. You’re tempted to get those new CNAs on the schedule as soon as possible. However, the best thing you can do to make sure that both time and money haven’t been wasted is to orient your new nursing assistants.
Nurse aides have the least amount of pre-employment training of any other clinical employee. Your CNAs may come to you with only weeks of clinical schooling. As a result, they require—and deserve—an extensive introduction to their jobs.
A thorough orientation has many benefits—for your workplace, your new employee and you. These benefits include:
- Reduced anxiety. By providing new employees with specific guidelines, an orientation helps them know what is expected of them from day one.
- Increased job satisfaction. Orientation helps ensure that new employees are well-prepared to perform their assigned duties instead of feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and ready to leave!
- Time savings for supervisors and coworkers. A thorough orientation makes new employees self-sufficient sooner—so they don’t pull you and your other aides away from your own jobs to answer questions or provide constant assistance.
- An improved employee retention rate. Across the nation, turnover of nursing assistants costs healthcare organizations more than $4 billion every year! However, studies have shown that organizations with a comprehensive orientation can expect to reduce their turnover rate by 50% within two years.
So, what should a CNA orientation program include? Here are some suggestions that have been shown to get nursing assistants off to a good start:
- Working as a Nursing Assistant. Promote professionalism by providing your aides with the tools they need to be team players. Review their job description with them, step by step, and discuss workplace policies on chain of command and delegation.
- Supporting Patient Rights. Emphasize the importance of patient rights, especially confidentiality—the cornerstone of the relationship between healthcare workers and their clients. Help your CNAs understand advance directives and the signs and symptoms of abuse.
- Infection Control. Because nosocomial infections continue to be the most common cause of medical errors, new employees benefit from a review of handwashing protocol, standard precautions and drug-resistant infections.
- Client Care Tips. Nursing assistants, especially those who are “new grads”, can become overwhelmed quickly by the demands of client care. If you arm them with practical tips that focus on personal care, nutrition and client safety, their on-the-job confidence will soar.
- Self Care. By spending orientation time on employee wellness, you’ll show your new aides that you care about them as people and recognize that they are your greatest resource. If you ignore this crucial area, you run the risk of developing stressed-out, disgruntled CNAs within a matter of months.
- Providing Quality Care. By focusing on customer service, quality improvement and medical error prevention, you’ll instill a desire for excellence among your new CNAs.
- Writing It All Down. As every nurse knows, when it comes to client care, if you don’t write it down, you didn’t do it. Devoting time to proper documentation (and/or oral reporting) is essential for every new employee.
Whew…that’s a lot of information. Who has time to put together an orientation program like that? The good news is that you don’t have to. Instead of reinventing the wheel, check around for companies that offer an orientation course for nursing assistants. For example, take a look at our comprehensive CNA Orientation Program: Getting Off to a Good Start. Not only does it provide your new CNAs with a top-notch orientation, it also gives them a whopping six hours of inservice credit!
Remember…by developing and retaining top-notch CNAs, you’ll recoup the money you spend on quality orientation materials in no time.
CNAs & Nurses: Be Lifelong Learners!
For those of us in the field of nursing, having an active, open mind and a true desire to learn are important attributes. Because things change rapidly in health care, nurses and CNAs can’t “rest on their laurels” and claim that they know all they need to know to do their jobs.
And that’s a good thing! Studies have shown that an hour of increased brain activity can make a person smarter, more energetic, creative and open to new ways of thinking. Of course, completing inservices or reading medical information online are two ways to increase your brain activity.
However, there are countless ways to exercise your mind that have nothing to do with medicine-but will still help keep your mind stimulated and ready for “on the job” learning. Here are just a few:
- Listen to a radio station that you normally don’t enjoy. Try to find something interesting about the music you hear.
- Throughout your day, if you find yourself waiting (in line at the grocery store, waiting for an elevator or at a red light), use that time to stretch your mind. For example, run through the multiplication tables in your head; try to remember all your teachers’ names, starting with kindergarten; recite the alphabet backwards; or name all 50 states in alphabetical order.
- Learn how to write backwards. Or try writing upside down. You can also challenge your brain by reading backward or upside down!
- Shower with your eyes closed. This forces your brain to rely on other senses besides sight to get the job done.
- Take a different route to work. Following an unfamiliar route integrates new sights, smells and sounds into your memory.
- If possible, change something about your daily work routine. Complete tasks in reverse order or take your break at a different time of day. Go ahead…mix it up a little!
- If your workplace has an elevator or an ATM, you’ll probably find instructions in Braille for visually impaired people. Close your eyes and practice “reading” the words or numbers with your fingers.
- Try eating one meal a day with your non-dominant hand. So, if you are right-handed, hold your fork and pick up your glass with your left hand. (You might also try brushing your teeth or drying your hair with your non-dominant hand.)
- At the grocery store, change the way you travel through the aisles. And, pick up a fruit or vegetable that you’ve never tried before. New tastes exercise the brain, too!
- Close your eyes while you eat, identifying each food by its taste, smell, temperature and texture.
- If you and your family always sit in the same chairs for meals or TV watching, change things up! Have everyone take a different seat to force the brain to see things from a different viewpoint.
- Master a new gadget, learn a new program on your computer or figure out all the “bells and whistles” on your cell phone!
- Walk backwards (carefully!) through your whole house.
Remember, unchanging day-to-day routines can deaden the brain. Daily tasks become almost subconscious and are completed using a minimum of brain energy. This may be efficient, but rigid routines provide no exercise for the brain. So, perk up your day-and keep your brain active-by incorporating a few of the above tips into your life. In the long run, it will keep you young and make you better at your job!
Should You Utilize a CNA Inservice Provider?
Quality inservices develop top-notch CNAs!
Is part of your job as a nursing supervisor or nurse educator to develop monthly inservices for your nursing assistants? If so, you know how time consuming that process can be. Perhaps you’ve considered purchasing “ready-made” topics from a company (like In the Know) that sells CNA inservices. You’re really tempted, but are not sure it’s worth the cost. Here are five tips for helping you make that decision:
1. Tally Your Time.
Next time you need to prepare an inservice, keep track of how much time you spend. Remember to include the time it takes you to think of a topic, come up with learning objectives, research and write the inservice, create some handouts, develop a quiz and produce an evaluation form. Chances are, this will take at least 10 hours of your time. Multiply that by your salary and you’ll probably be shocked at what one inservice is costing your workplace! By purchasing inservices, you avoid “reinventing the wheel” and can bring down your cost per inservice considerably.
2. Do a Quality Check.
No matter how knowledgeable you are about the nursing field, creating inservices may not come easily to you. It requires a variety of “non-nursing” skills such as knowing how to research quickly and effectively, being a good writer and having some computer savvy. Are the inservices you’re creating capturing the attention of your CNAs? Do they provide an in-depth study of each topic? If not, they may not be having a positive effect on client care. Inservices from a respected inservice company can spark interest for both you and your aides. However, before making a purchase, insist on trying out a sample inservice. You’ll want to see the quality of their product for yourself.
3. Take a Look at Compliance.
We all get in a rut, causing us to do something a certain way just because that’s how it’s always been done. But, when you look at your current system for providing inservices, is it really working? For example, do your CNAs skip inservice meetings because they are too busy or just aren’t interested? Do you struggle to get all your nursing assistants to meet their inservice hours by the end of the year? If so, there is probably an easier way. A quality inservice provider can give you a flexible, easy-to-institute inservice program that will please you, your CNAs and any surveyors that come your way.
4. Eye Your Inventory.
Over time, you’ve probably built up a library of inservice topics. Take a peek at what you’ve got to offer your nursing assistants. The basics are probably there: standard precautions, nutrition, Alzheimer’s disease, abuse, confidentiality. And, you might find yourself reusing these topics with each newly hired group of CNAs. But, it’s important to meet the learning needs of your aides by offering a wide variety of inservice topics. Coming up with mandatory topics, disease process inservices, psychosocial issues and basic skill reviews could be a full time job and/or eat into your personal time! A good inservice provider has dozens of topics from which to choose. And, the more your CNAs know, the more they can achieve!
5. Ask Your CNAs.
To find out if your current inservice offerings are meeting the needs of your nursing assistants, ask them! You might distribute an evaluation form or have an informal group discussion. Ask questions such as: Do our current inservices prepare you to succeed at your job? Do you feel that your skills are enhanced by every inservice you complete? Are the inservices providing you with information that you can apply in your daily client care? If your CNAs answer “no” more often than “yes”, then it may be time to try an inservice provider. Quality inservice education should do more than fulfill state requirements. It should enhance the professionalism of your nurse aides and improve your client care. So, take the time to investigate inservice providers and find the one that helps you develop a team of top-notch CNAs.
CNA Inservices: 5 More Great Ideas
If you are looking for more ideas to spice up your 2010 inservice schedule, consider presenting the following topics:
1. Review the Normal Aging Process
During their short initial training time, nursing assistants learn a few basics about the human body. However, in order to enhance their observational skills, it’s good to provide more details about how humans age. Try presenting the information by body system. Talk about the lifestyle choices that slow aging and those that speed it up—and remind your CNAs how they can help their elderly clients enjoy a good quality of life.
2. Discuss End of Life Care
To be outstanding, CNAs should be able to handle the full spectrum of life, including the dying process. Give your aides information on the end of life, such as how to recognize symptoms that signal death is near, how to provide comfort for dying clients and their families and how to care for the body once death has occurred. Consider including information on death and cultural diversity and the stages of grief.
3. Brush Up on Mouth Care
Top-notch CNAs understand the importance and benefits of good oral hygiene and how it can affect not just the quality of their clients’ lives, but also their overall health. How about presenting an inservice that goes beyond the mouth care protocol for your workplace? Give plenty of tips for performing oral hygiene, dealing with dentures, and observing for oral and dental problems.
4. Delve into Basic Human Needs
To enhance your nursing assistants’ sense of empathy, give them an overview of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. During the inservice, review the five levels of basic human needs, how the levels relate to each other and how illness affects a person’s place in the Hierarchy. With a greater understanding of what makes people “tick”, your aides will excel at providing holistic, client-centered care.
5. Talk about Cost-Efficient Care
While cost-efficiency is always important in health care, it’s especially vital in today’s economy. Plan an inservice that provides practical tips for how nursing assistants can save money throughout their daily client care. Be sure to cover how to minimize waste and how time management, healthcare associated infections and medical errors affect the bottom line. Top-notch CNAs know that saving money today means better working conditions tomorrow!
These are just a few ideas for rounding out your inservice offerings. At the same time, you’ll keep your nursing assistants interested and be on your way to developing a team of top-notch CNAs!
Happy Teaching,
Linda
Linda Leekley BS, RN
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