Archive for June, 2011

Every CNA is either a stayer, a switcher or a leaver. So says a new study about job satisfaction among aides.

Sometimes, it’s not all about the money. Instead, job satisfaction and emotional well-being are better indicators of retention in long-term care facilities, particularly with nursing assistants, according to new research from Rice University, University of Pittsburgh, and Baylor College of Medicine, published in The Gerontologist.

Well better pay wouldn’t hurt retention numbers, that’s for sure.

Researchers looked at turnover rates of 620 certified nursing assistants to give administrators an idea of work-related factors that contribute to turnover. Previous studies have over-exaggerated the turnover rates, said study coauthor Vikas Mittal, professor of marketing in Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business in press release, because previous research included data from both full- and part-time workers.

They assume that most aides have chosen the hours they work; some of us do, but many of us would prefer to work full time but it’s not an option thru our employers. Usually this is the case so benefits don’t have to be available to part timers.

Instead, they found that most nursing assistants (85 percent) did stay at their position. The study identified “stayers” as those who remained at the same job with the same organization for a year after they were surveyed, classified “switchers” as those who continued to work at least 30 hours at a different organization, and “leavers” as those who no longer worked in direct-care or left the workforce all together.

So which type of aide are you?

It feels odd to be classified like this. Once again, we’re not people with families or financial needs- we’re being labeled yet again.

We’ve written here about how CNA’s are often the victim of discrimination and racism. But this article takes the other side to the extreme:

WEBSTER — A certified nurse’s aide is charged with allegedly hitting an elderly resident at a local extended care facility after the resident, who is suffering from dementia, called her a racially derogatory name.

It’s hard to be called names. It’s even harder to be called racially charged names. How do aides ignore this and walk away? Is there a better way to prepare people who want to work as aides, to deal with these comments?