Who will be there for you when you need care?
|
|
“Most people who work in the field of long-term care are well aware of today’s nursing shortage. With a rapidly growing aging population, the demand for in-home caregivers will nearly double by 2020! Currently, family caregivers provide the overwhelming majority of home care services—nearly 80%. However, there will be a growing shortage of family caregivers, since boomers had fewer children than their parents and up to 12% had no children. Boomers are also more likely to be divorced and to live alone as they become elderly. With this growing family caregiver shortage, reliance on paraprofessionals such as personal and home care aides will be even greater in coming decades. The number of personal and home care aides needed is expected to increase by 41%. The traditional approach to health care education, which focuses primarily on training individuals with CNA, LPN, and RN credentials, is destined to come up short. Although credentialed health care practitioners are greatly needed, they will not be doing the bulk of home care. That responsibility falls mainly on family and non-certified care providers, who are still largely untrained. Of course, it is essential that in-home caregivers be trained, but is it realistic to expect all home care providers to become CNAs? Or is it simply another impediment to fulfilling the demand for the large numbers of caregivers who will be needed? The current education model excludes many potential in-home support providers who would make excellent caregivers but who have educational, social or language barriers. These include dislocated workers, public assistance recipients and those who speak English as a second language. If we don’t act soon to offer appropriate standardized training for all home care providers, we will undoubtedly see greater incidences of elder abuse, neglect and a general decline in the quality of life and conditions of the elderly, while we grasp at straws to solve this health care crisis.
At Medifecta Healthcare Training, we take this situation seriously. We want to see that the hundreds of thousands of non-certified care providers doing in-home care receive the education and training they so critically need. That’s why we developed the 40-hour Personal Care Attendant Training Program. It delivers effective standardized training for in-home care providers. Organizations can use it repeatedly to train and graduate a steady stream of well-qualified, confident caregivers. Developed according to principles of adult learning theory, written at a 5th grade literacy level and requiring no pre-requisites, the program is appropriate for a wider range of educational levels. As the age wave crests and the caregiver shortage deepens, the question being asked by an increasing number of older people and their families is “When I need care, will there be a trained care provider for me?” Everyone who requires care deserves a qualified, compassionate care provider. At Medifecta Healthcare Training we are doing our best to expand the quality and availability of care providers for everyone in need.
|
|