by Geralyn Magan
Researchers from the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston and Weil Cornell Medicine asked direct care professionals about work stress, employer satisfaction, and turnover intent during the pandemic.
Provision of high-quality communication and training are essential for increasing job satisfaction and lessening turnover intent among direct care professionals in nursing homes.
That’s the key conclusion of a new article in Geriatric Nursing by Verena R. Cimarolli, Natasha S. Bryant, and Robyn Stone, researchers at the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston, and Francesca Falzarano, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine.
The article’s full text is available, free of charge, through October 30, 2022. The research was supported by the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation.
Factors Associated with Nursing Home Direct Care Professionals’ Turnover Intent During the COVID-19 Pandemic suggests that the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on direct care professionals increased the high turnover and staff shortages in nursing homes that were already prevalent before the pandemic.
The authors sought to identify factors associated with intent to remain on the job among direct care professionals in nursing homes. They concluded that “the only factor directly associated with intent to remain was higher job satisfaction. There were no significant direct associations between intent to remain and COVID-19-related work stress, quality of communication, and preparedness.”
The level of job satisfaction among direct care professionals in the study sample was driven by how well their organizations communicated with them and how well prepared they felt to care for residents during COVID-19, write the authors.
“High-quality communication is also essential for direct care professionals to feel competent to care for residents during the extremely stressful work time of the pandemic and can, in fact, mediate some of the job stress experienced,” they conclude.
The research team collected data for the study through an employee engagement and management system called WeCare ConnectTM. The system is used by 165 aging services providers at more than 1,000 locations around the United States. During May 2020, WeCare ConnectTM added questions designed by researchers to its employee interview battery. These pandemic-related questions asked each participant to rate:
- Their overall work stress as an employee during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The quality of organizational/employer communication around COVID-19.
- Their organization’s communication with them regarding how to protect themselves and their families, and how to care for residents and protect them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- How prepared they felt to care for a resident with known or suspected COVID-19.
- How satisfied they were with their current job, and whether they saw themselves working for their current organization in a year.
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Read the full text of Factors Associated with Nursing Home Direct Care Professionals’ Turnover Intent During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Access to the article will be offered free of charge through October 30.