Are You Tricking or Treating Clients With Inadequate Aide Training?
Kenyon HomeCare Consulting • March 16, 2021
When you agree to provide homecare to clients, you make a promise to provide superior care to the best of your ability. If you don’t follow through with that promise, you’ve played a cruel trick on those counting on you. And that’s certainly not the kind of trick clients want to experience this Halloween!
How do you make sure you’re treating clients, rather than tricking them? By giving your aides the best education possible, so in turn, they provide excellent, specialized, individualized care.
Inadequate Aide Training Tricks Clients
The last thing you want to do as someone your clients trusts is to trick them. But even if it’s not your intention, failing to provide adequate aide training does just that.
How? By not making good on your promise to provide superior care to those who depend on your organization. Lets discuss a few issues you will run into without proper aide training:
Lack of knowledge to deal with extenuating circumstances – Basic aide training simply doesn’t educate caregivers on many of the overwhelming issues that plague the nation’s elderly today.
Increased staff turnover- If employees aren’t valued, provided means to advance in their position or educated on the constant changes in the medical field, they will find another place to work.
Lower overall client satisfaction – It’s not hard to distinguish well-educated caregivers from the pack. When clients feel their caregivers are incompetent, they’re less likely to feel happy with the level of care they receive.
Advanced Aide Training Treats Clients
We know you care about your clients. These people are the reason you went into business! As a leader, you are dedicated to delivering only topnotch services. Providing advanced training for your employees is the best gift you can treat your clients to this Halloween.
Reasons your clients will thank you for treating them with well-trained aides include:
Enhanced chronic disease care – Only aides with the best education can provide the sort of specialized care that’s needed for clients with chronic illnesses.
Fewer hospitalizations – No one likes to leave home and go to the hospital. Advanced training provides aides with the ability to quickly recognize and report health concerns that lead to unnecessary trips to the emergency room or a hospital admission.
Advanced Aide Training Benefits Homecare Organizations
Educating your aides beyond the basics not only benefits clients, but it also benefits your organization as a whole. Here’s why.
Professional Referrals – Your reputation in the community is partially reliant upon how educated your caregivers are. If professionals within the healthcare industry know you’re created an elite staff to provide the best care possible, they’re more likely to send you referrals.
Employee Satisfaction – By giving employees the chance to improve their abilities, you allow them room to grow. Advanced aide training expands employees’ career paths within your agency, which makes aides happy and leads to reduced turnover.
Sets you apart from your competition– With advanced chronic disease education, your aides are trained to provide specialized, specific care. Your competition isn’t equipped to provide these services your clients/families want and your referral sources expect.
At Aide University, we provide everything you need to treat your clients to the best experience possible through highly-educated aides. With chronic disease education your caregivers will learn:
How to recognize worsening or new symptoms
Common medications and their side effects used to treat particular diagnosis
Ways to reduce trips to the emergency room
How to provide specialized care for specific chronic conditions
Advanced aide training benefits your entire organization – your clients, your employees and your bottom line. Are you ready to make the jump? Find out more about Kenyon’s Aide University here.
Will you trick or treat your clients this Halloween?
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Today, this article will look at little different than out typical articles. We all know the costs of losing employees and trying to hire and train new ones. It is exhausting and expensive. So, we think about our wages and benefit packages all the time. What can we do differently that makes people stay? We can’t change the job and we don’t want to keep people that don’t like the work itself. So, how do we acknowledge employees in a way that is valuable to them and that our businesses can afford to do? 5 Things To Consider About Employee Recognition At Your Christmas Party: 1. Years of Service: These can be based on milestone work anniversaries (5, 10, 15 yrs, etc.). If a person has been at your agency 11 years, you pull them up and acknowledge them in the group of employees who have been there at least 10 years up until the time they hit the 15 years landmark. This way longevity is recognized yearly. 2. Special Employee awards: Now, this may be difficult if your staff is very small, but acknowledge the employee who has gone the extra mile in the job they do. Tell the story. The employee needs to know when the employer is proud of the work that has been done. Consider a plaque or certificate. Don’t minimize the value of the employee having them to display. 3. Acknowledge all employees in the mix: Because we are a clinical industry, the administrative staff is often overlooked on day-to-day operations. Ultimately, don’t miss the chance to acknowledge the employee who was able to catch billing errors or collect on a large account. Staff doesn’t like to hear about money, but those types of collections keep Christmas bonuses in place! So, make sure the other staff knows the accomplishments of the finance department or the office manager that every caller loves to speak to. Don't ever forget the IT staff that is on call more than any clinical person in your agency! 4. Letters from the administration: Add a personal note to your staff either collectively or individually depending on the size of your agency. If you are larger, there are employees you don’t often see or get to talk to on a regular basis, so take the time so send a note with that Christmas bonus. 5. Consider the Christmas bonus: Listen, some of you can afford to do substantial monetary bonuses and that is fantastic. However, if you are not in that position, consider something in its place. Maybe small gas cards go with the letter from administration. With the cost of groceries, consider something that helps with the costs of daily living for employees. Big box gift cards in your area will always be used. You may do a lot of these things on a yearly basis to employees. All this being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for acknowledgement throughout the year. However, your annual Christmas party is a good way to do it collectively. Between your annual party, write the individual cards to employees when you hear a patient interaction worthy of praise. Or, maybe you buy a gas card for the employee who has picked up extra shifts and always shows up on time. Ultimately, employees will feel valued. You will not regret the time, effort, and energy put into these efforts. Merry Christmas! If you want help with recruitment and retention strategies for your agency, please call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today.