Recognize therapists as part of team to retain staff
Recognize therapists as part of team to retain staff
Inservices, forms need to address more than nursing
Discovering what attracts and keeps qualified therapists at a home health agency is important for all agencies, and some are doing very well. Mary Calys, MSPT, formerly a rehabilitation supervisor at North Kansas City (MO) Hospital Home Health, says therapists don't leave her agency to work for another one, so her efforts to hire therapists during her four years at the agency have been the result of expansion rather than turnover.
While Calys took the position as rehabilitation supervisor of an established department at North Kansas, she faces a different challenge in the position she started in late April at a new agency for which she has to hire an entire therapy staff. "There will be a number of challenges including a need for therapists to be licensed in two states because the agency serves a geographic area that crosses state lines," she says.
Even with the challenges, Calys points out that the basic steps of making sure you respect the therapist's expertise and knowledge still will be important. A few ways to demonstrate your agency's recognition of therapy as a key part of patient care are:
- Offer rehab-focused inservices.
Continuing education is important to therapists so make sure your inservice offerings don't just focus on OASIS or nursing topics, Calys recommends. Offer sessions that cover new evidence-based rehab therapies, new clinical tools for therapists, or other rehab topics in which therapists have expressed an interest, she says.
Not only should therapy educational presentations be open to nurses but make sure your nursing-focused educational sessions are open to therapists who may want to attend, says Cindy Krafft, MSPT, COS-C, director of rehabilitation for OSF Home Care in Peoria, IL.
"I've seen agencies schedule nursing inservices for which therapists were told that they didn't need to come." While therapists and nurses may not have an interest in a topic being presented for the other group, don't exclude them, she says. The best way to keep everyone working as a team is not to segregate them, she adds.
- Don't make therapists use nursing forms.
Look carefully at the forms your agency uses to see if you are a nurse-oriented agency as opposed to a clinician-oriented agency, suggests Krafft. "Remember that most therapists think of home health as a nursing-dominated field," she says. "If all of your forms have a line that says nurse signature,' you are reinforcing that perception." Change signature lines to say "clinician signature" to show your respect for non-nursing clinicians, Krafft adds.
Discovering what attracts and keeps qualified therapists at a home health agency is important for all agencies, and some are doing very well.Subscribe Now for Access
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