Festival educates, recognizes aides’ work
Agency uses pizza, Elvis in mandatory training
Faced with the challenge of keeping more than 900 home health aides in 14 offices up-to-date on mandatory inservice hours, Interim Health Care of the Eastern Carolinas in Jacksonville, NC, takes a fun, creative approach that combines training with recognition of the aides’ valuable work.
The benefits, says nursing educator Suzanne McCabe, RN, are twofold: greater retention of employees and less end-of-year scrambling to get training done. "It takes a lot of preparation, but the payoff is wonderful," she says. "Our retention and our [inservice] hours have improved as a result."
Previously, the agency would bring aides into the individual branch offices for necessary inservices and would hold recognition events in individual offices as well. "It was repetitious," she says. "It was difficult to get them in — boring and too monotonous. And retention was an issue, as it is for any home care agency right now."
The process created problems as staff rushed to get in the necessary inservice hours in December. "It takes up too much professional time to pull people in in December," she says. "Everybody’s just too busy with Christmas."
Interim’s solution is a biannual, all-day "nurse aide festival of education and appreciation," built around a teaching theme and featuring aide rec ognition between inservices. Two similar events are held simultaneously, one for the agency’s Wilmington region and one for the Fayetteville region. Each is held off-site at a large facility such as a National Guard armory and is set up with booths and a lunch area, with food provided by the agency. Participating aides receive an admission ticket that also serves as documentation, with nurses signing the ticket as aides progress through the inservices.
A master of ceremonies blows a whistle to start and stop inservice sessions. Throughout the event, the agency raffles off gifts for the aides — including coffee mugs, key chains, a full uniform, and a company cardigan — and exemplary performance is honored between sessions.
After 14 years of recognizing staff in small office ceremonies and the company newsletter, McCabe says, it was time for a change. "This is more franchisewide," she says. "Our president, regional managers, and our vice president for programs are present. It’s more of a big deal for them to have all of that administrative staff present. And to be recognized among your peers is always the most beneficial."
For the autumn session, the theme is "Interim Goes Retro, 50s in the Fall." It features nurses and administrators wearing poodle skirts and bobby socks, a DJ spinning 50s tunes, and a list of appropriately titled inservices, including these:
• "Remember When: The Good Old Days," on Alzheimer’s disease education.
• "My Patient’s Name is Elvis," about professionalism and patient confidentiality.
• "As Time Goes By," which covers HIV and AIDS and mandatory universal precautions.
• "Beauty School Dropout," an inservice on dress codes and professional appearance. As part of this inservice, the agency will raffle off a makeover.
• "The Twist," a back injury prevention session.
• "Blue Moon," a mandatory environmental safety program.
• "The Sock Hop," a session on diabetic foot care. It is not mandatory but helps aides make up their required 12 hours of education.
• "The Drive-in," a training video session.
The company’s president will appear during lunch costumed as Elvis. "We try to have a lot of fun while we’re doing it," McCabe says.
In March, Interim held its first such program, themed for spring and featuring McCabe dressed as a bumblebee. Booths included "Fishin’ for Nutrition" "Sneeze If You Please," covering environmental allergies; "Falls and Calls," about fall prevention and occurrence reporting; and "The Gift to Lift," which incorporated representatives from a durable medical equipment company demonstrating use of a Hoyer lift.
Although the booths are themed, information presented is straightforward and can be reused. McCabe says her goal is to feature a different theme for each program. She originally intended to hold three a year but has cut it to two because of the preparation involved.
"I do a lot of driving now in our franchise, so I spend a lot of time in the car trying to think of themes," she says. "Fortunately, I have that kind of mind, because I have to come up with all the booth names."
Aides aren’t the only ones recognized by the training. During the session, participants are asked to judge which booths are most creative and informative, and those nurses are awarded trophies. "I like to reward the professional staff for volunteering and taking the time out of their busy schedule," McCabe says. Well before the inservices, she reviews their outlines to ensure the instructional information is complete and correct.
She says there are challenges to pulling off such an event, especially for the crowds she must deal with. Before the first festival in March, it was hard to get professional staff to volunteer to help, because they weren’t sure what it would entail.
"Once it was over, I had nurses wanting to sign up for the next festival," she says. "I think this time it will be easier because they’ve already been through one."
She says it’s important to get RSVPs from participating aides in order to plan for the amount of food needed, as well as handouts and other information. Reminders are sent to the aides in payroll-stuffers that include the location of the sites, directions, and hours of operation.
McCabe’s also getting the hang of feeding such a large group. In March, she chose six-foot subs but spent several hours driving to and from the place offering the best deal. This time, she’s serving pizza, which can be coordinated with companies in different cities more easily and economically.
Although the expenses can mount for such an operation, McCabe says it ends up costing the agency about $2 to $3 per aide, an expenditure she sees as economical. "Yes, it costs money, but when we look back on what we accomplished, as far as the inservice hours, it’s not bad," she says.
Just as important has been the response of the aides, who praise the creativity of the inservice and the opportunity to be recognized in front of their peers. "In addition to voting for the most creative and the most informative booth, [aides] are asked, Would you return to another nurse aide festival?’ I would say 98% said yes," she says.
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