Introduction
The issue of staffing has been an ongoing challenge for the United States healthcare system. Nursing homes are facilities that provide long-term care for their residents, the majority of whom are older people. Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) are employed in these healthcare establishments. This paper will explore the problem of qualified employees in long-term care and will consider the stakeholders and challenges in the long-term care continuum.
Main text
The background for this research paper is the increasing issue of healthcare workers shortage and lack of practices that would allow healthcare facilities to retain these employees. Lathren et al. (2020) state that among the population of certified nursing assistants (CNA), 90% are women and half of this population is a minority or comes from a low-income family. The authors note that CNAs, in particular, are characterized by high turnover rates and high rates of burnout, which are associated with working hours and low wages. Hence, CNAs face many challenges, both personal and professional, which may be contributing to their decision to choose a different industry. As a result, nursing homes do not have enough employees, and long-term care cannot be provided to their residents.
Mindfulness training is one way of addressing this disparity of the long-term care continuum. As noted by Lathren et al. (2020), this practice helps “decreasing stress, mental health symptoms, and burnout in other health care workers, including physicians and nurses” (p. 1). As a result, the anticipated effect is CNAs’ increased tolerance to work-related stress, and the turnover of personnel in nursing homes should decrease, contributing to the high-quality long-term care in these facilities.
Several groups of stakeholders may be interested in this study. Mainly, the managers of the healthcare establishments, in this particular case, executives managing nursing homes, are stakeholders because they depend on the ability to retain CNAs. Hence, they benefit from this study by having an empirically proven option to retain employees. CNAs benefit from this study because it provides them with advice on how to manage heavy workloads and work-related staff, contributing to their ability to withstand stress. Nursing home residents benefit from this study since they can receive quality services that they depend on. Finally, the community where these nursing homes operate benefits from this study since they will be sure that there is an excellent long-term care facility in their neighborhood where people receive quality services.
Challenges in the continuum of long-term care are connected to the stressful work conditions for the nursing personnel and shortage of qualified healthcare workers that contribute to burnout and high turnover rates. Lathren et al. (2020) note that there are approximately 1.4 million residents in nursing homes in the United States. However, these nursing homes have incredibly high staff turnover rates.
The impact of challenges on the long-term care system is adverse since high turnover and burnout lead to dissatisfaction with work and understaffing. As a result, employed nurses cannot perform their job correctly because they have to work more to address the understaffing. The dissatisfaction leads to a desire to eave healthcare or does not allow the nurses to perform their work responsibilities properly. This leads t increased healthcare costs and lower quality of long-term care, adversely impacting the patients.
This issue has a significant impact on the staffing of the healthcare system since high turnover and burnout rates mean that nursing homes continuously lose personnel and look for new medical professionals to fill the staffing gap. In terms of funding, this problem contributes to additional healthcare costs, since the process of hiring and training personnel is an additional expense for any healthcare facility. As a result, they require additional funding to maintain their operations. Regulation-wise, Lathren et al. (2020) suggest that policymakers should consider including self-compassion training as part of the education program for CNAs to prepare them for a stressful work environment. The existing regulations fail to address the shortage of personnel and ways of overcoming it.
One recommendation for addressing these challenges is to focus on preparing the employees for the stressful work by introducing them to psychological techniques. Another recommendation is to establish programs and scholarships that will help prepare a larger number of CNAs. This is necessary since, although mindfulness training is a valuable psychological practice, understaffed facilities cannot work unless they can hire enough personnel. Finally, as Lathren et al. (2020) note, half of CNAs come from low-income homes and are a minority, and establishing a support program for these individuals can improve retention.
Conclusion
Overall, this research paper explores the challenges in the continuum of long-term care. The issue is the understaffing of nursing homes due to work conditions and work-related stress, which impairs the quality of care in these facilities. The challenge is to retain a qualified workforce to reduce costs associated with the need to rehire these professionals. One way of addressing this problem is mindfulness training or self-compassion as part of the education program for CNAs, which will help them adapt to a stressful work environment.
Reference
Lathren, C. R., Sloane, P. D., Zimmerman, S., Bluth, K., Silbersack, J., & Wretman, C. J. (2020). Mindful self-compassion training for nursing assistants in long-term care: Challenges and future directions. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 1-10.