Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Improving nursing home staffing

If you are ever a patient in a hospital or a nursing home,

    even the most "common "  nursing assistant ( NA ) will appear to

    you as a guardian angel of kindness and mercy.

             Despite a crisis in staffing, nursing aids too often receive

    pitiful wages  - and even worse, in the institutional pecking order

    they are held in contempt.

               One way to keep quality  nursing assistants is revolutionize

    career opportunities for them. After 2 or more years as an NA , he or she

    should be offered a complete scholarship to study for a more skilled

    job - while continuing to work part time as an NA.

               Nursing Assistant should not mean DEAD END JOB. One way

    to increase the number of " minority " professional nurses is to recognize

    the potential in hundreds of NAs. Our society pays a very big price for

    idiotic snobbery : always seeing people where they are instead of where

    their innate abilities can take them.

            What is true of NAs is also true of  registered nurses: many

    of them would make fine DOCTORS !

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Ron