Caregivers: The Most Important People in Your Organization

 

Question: Who is the most important person in your organization? You? Your scheduler? Your marketer? Your front desk, HR, or care coordinator? If you’re reading this blog post, I’m guessing you already know the real answer.

The most important member(s) of your organization are your CAREGIVERS. Your caregivers are the ones who are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the quality of care your organization provides. They are there, day in and day out, deep in the weeds, making the thing your organization gets paid for HAPPEN. They also tend to have the lowest level of education, the lowest pay, and the least amount of resources to help them meet the varied and complex needs of their job.

Here’s the thing though. I don’t believe for one second that organizations don’t care or don’t want to offer something better to their caregivers. Call me naïve, but I just don’t. There are honestly way easier ways to make a buck than to own a caregiving organization, so it stands to reason that the vast majority of people who run caregiving companies… actually care.

The people who run these organizations are also highly likely to share another character trait. They are probably SMART. So, these folks KNOW that if their caregivers had better training, the quality of care they could offer would be higher. They KNOW that if high quality training were consistent for all of their caregivers, they could PREVENT injuries and falls, INCREASE the CONSISTENCY of care quality, and PREVENT client complaints. They UNDERSTAND that those things would INCREASE CLIENT RETENTION, allow for EASIER SCHEDULING, and PREVENT calls coming in at all hours from caregivers who don’t know how to move the person they are caring for. Furthermore, these folks KNOW that access to COMPREHENSIVE transfer training (training that covers a wide variety of scenarios and client issues) for their WHOLE workforce would INCREASE THE NUMBER of clients available to them.

The people running these organizations aren’t unaware of the benefits of consistent, high quality, comprehensive transfer training. They are just unaware of a logistically plausible way to get it.

If your organization is suffering from problems with falls, injuries, complaints, turnover, scheduling complexity, client loss, or having to refer clients away due to poor skill fit… then you might be seeing symptoms of the need for higher quality, systematic training.

Send me an e-mail at emilia.bourland@aipctherapy.com to discuss your challenges and identify good fit solutions.

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