Nursing home care aides are burning
out but measures can be taken to improve their work conditions. And
that will result in better care for their patients
By Carole A. Estabrooks
and Stephanie A. Chamberlain Troy Media contributors
Many of us have moms and dads or older
friends and relatives in nursing home facilities. We care very much
about their well-being and the supports they receive. But who's caring
for the care aides who do the bulk of the front-line work in nursing
homes? Their welfare is almost entirely overlooked in the health system.
And the health of the care aide affects the quality of care they deliver.
Care aides,
also known as nurses aides, personal support workers or continuing care
assistants, are the largest workforce in nursing homes in Canada.
Research suggests between 75 and 90 per cent
of direct care to residents is provided by care aides, including
physical care, such as helping those they care for to eat, bathe and
dress, as well as emotional care and social interaction. Their role is
central to the quality of care and quality of life of nursing home
residents.
So what happens when you focus specifically on the contributions and the health of nursing home care aides?
You discover care aide burnout in Canada is rampant.
Along with our colleagues at the Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC), we recently published a study
in the International Journal of Nursing Studies that surveyed almost
1,200 care aides from 30 nursing homes in three Western Canadian
provinces. We found that care aides, despite high belief in their
professional abilities and finding their work meaningful, were at high
risk for emotional exhaustion and cynicism.
What is burnout exactly?
Burnout
is a psychological condition that results from work-related stress and
can present itself as emotional exhaustion, such as a lack of emotional
response or a lack of physical energy. It can present as a negative and
detached attitude and a lack of feeling of accomplishment in your work.
Research shows that those who are burned out report providing lower quality care.
In our study, we found that care aides
work efficiently, sometimes under challenging conditions, and with a
strong sense that what they do is meaningful - but the risk for burnout
is great.
Combine these complex care demands with
often inadequate staffing, limited or nearly non-existent continuing
education and training opportunities, and lack of decision-making
opportunities for the residents they care for, and it's no surprise that
the threat of burnout is high.
The consequences of burnout are significant - and costly.
If care workers are not healthy, their work suffers and so does the quality of patient care. Care aide burnout can also result
in job dissatisfaction and affect workplace productivity, high staff
turnover and poor staff retention, as well as high absenteeism.
So what can be done?
Based on this study and more than 10
years of research in nursing homes, we have a number of recommendations
aimed at improving our understanding of the care aide workforce:
The regulation of the care aide workforce
must be addressed, particularly given the frail, highly vulnerable
population of older Canadians who are in their care. And what's good for
the carer turns out to be good for the nursing home resident, too.
Dr.
Carole A. Estabrooks is a professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the
University of Alberta and scientific director of the Knowledge
Utilization Studies Program (KUSP) and the pan-Canadian Translating
Research in Elder Care (TREC) research program hosted at the University
of Alberta. Stephanie Chamberlain is a doctoral candidate at the
University of Alberta. She is an Alzheimer Society of Canada doctoral
fellow and a Revera Scholar. |
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Monday, August 6, 2018
Who's caring for the nursing home carers?
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