Ontario's Plan for Personal Support Workers - 0 views
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May 16 is Personal Support Worker Day. PSWs are increasingly providing the majority of direct care services to elderly or ill patients who live in long-term care institutions or who receive home care.
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Richards noted that “they [PSWs] are constantly on the go … they have very little time to actually sit down and provide comfort to residents and build that important relationship between themselves as caregivers with the residents and their family members”.
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There is a great deal of variation in what PSWs do, where they work, and how they are supervised. This has made many argue that there must be more standardized training and regulation of PSWs. Others point out that it is at least as important to ensure that their working conditions allow PSWs to provide the compassionate and high quality care that their clients deserve.
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PSWs have a role standard which says “personal support workers do for a person the things that the person would do for themselves, if they were physically or cognitively able”.
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There is a great deal of variation around the kind of care PSW’s provide, with some PSWs providing medical care such as changing wound dressings and administering medication, and others providing ‘only’ personal care such as bathing, transfers from bed and housework. What PSWs can and cannot do varies based on their training, supervision and employer policies.
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An estimated 57,000 PSWs in Ontario work in the long-term care sector, 26,000 work for agencies that provide community and home care, and about 7,000 provide care in hospitals.
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Changes to the Long-Term Care Act in 2010 outlined a minimum standard of education for PSWs working in that sector specifically.
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PSWs working in long-term care homes are required to work under the supervision of a registered nurse or registered practical nurse
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Some have suggested that rather than standardizing education for PSWs, more standards should be put in place around PSW supervision, scope of practice and work environment in long-term care and community agencies.
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92% of PSWs are women, and many work at multiple part time jobs, involving a great deal of shift work. PSWs are often paid minimum wages with few benefits.
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Community colleges, continuing education programs and private career colleges offer courses or programs of varying durations, with no standardized core curriculum across the programs. There is no single body in Ontario that monitors the quality of these programs.
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a PSW Registry to collect information about the training and employment status of the nearly 100,000 PSWs in Ontario
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“a registry is a mechanism of counting and it doesn’t ensure anything about quality, preparation or standards.”
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in the past two months there have been stakeholder consultations around educational standards for PSWs
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In my opinion, what we need most is a ministry (MOHLTC) that will demonstrate leadership by clarifying the role of the PSW in long-term care, nursing homes, hospitals and yes, home care, and to consistently enforce high standards of care
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PSWs should feel able to rely on consistent supervision and clear guidance from registered nursing staff and management, yet from my observation there is a lack of communication between PSWs and RPNs/RNs in a long term care home setting, and rarely in my experience is honest communication encouraged to include patients/residents and families. In home care, PSWs have even less support or supervision which should concern people.
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PSWs are rarely afforded the time to properly perform the necessary tasks assigned to them and they often bear the brunt of complaints
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In Nova Scotia, a registry was put in place for Continuing Care Assistants (the provinces’ equivalent to PSWs) in 2010 which has been used to communicate directly with CCAs as well as keep track of where they work. In addition, the registry provides resources and the development of a personalized learning plan to help care givers who do not have the provincial CCA obtain further training. British Columbia has also recently introduced a registry for Care Aids and Community Support Workers.
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CUPE addresses these issues in Our Vision For Better Seniors’ Care: http://cupe.ca/privatization-watch-february-2010/our-vision-research-paper
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having someone help you bathe, dress, eat and even wash your hair is as important as the medical care
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I also believe that registering PSW’s will eliminate those who are in the career for just the money.
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Every year they talk more and more about residents rights, dignity ect ect … and yet every year, residents have been given less one on one time, poorer quality of meals, cut backs on activities and more than anything else, a lessened quality of care provided by over worked PSW’s.
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Residents have floor mat sensors, wheelchair sensors, wander guard door alarm sensors, bed alarm sensors and add that to the endless stream of call bells and psw’s pagers sounding, it sounding like you are living inside a firestation with non-stop fire
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When we do our 1.5hrs worth of charting every night they tell us to lie and say we have done restorative care and other tasks which had no time to do so they can provide funding which never seems to result in more staff.
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for the Cupe reps reading this. You make me sick. Your union doesn’t back us up in the slightest and you have allowed for MANY additional tasks to be put onto psw’s without any increase in pay.
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In the past year alone our charting has become computerized and went from 25mins to 1.5hrs. We now provide restorative care like rehab workers and now are officially responsible for applying and charting for medicated creams, not to mention the additional time spent now that prn behavior meds were discontinued and restraints removed created chaos
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you should work in Long Term Care then, you will make a few buck more, still have 30-40 residents but at least you have a partner. On the other hand though, unlike retirement homes, for those 30-40 people, you will be dealing with aggressive behaviors, resistive residents, dementia, 75% of your residents will require a mechanical lift, you will have 1-2hrs worth of charting to do on top of your already hectic work load which they will not provide you more time to complete it, so only expect to get one 15min break in an 8 hr shift and often stay late to finish your charting.
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As long as retirement homes are privily own they will always be run under the landlord and tenant act. That’s why they can work you like a dog and get away with it.
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quality is more than assistance with daily hygene, feeding, dressing, providing meds, getting people up in the morning, putting them to bed in the evening
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But I will not let this discourage me from taking the course, because no other job I’ve had has even come close to being as rewarding or fulfilling
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The pay is better in Long Term care as we know but PSW’s work for that extra few dollars more an hour
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Most of us enjoy the field but more work has to be done to take care of your PSW’s and a pat on the back is just not going to do it.
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administration has to stop being greedy with their big wages and start finding more money to invest in your front line, the PSW