1 Thing You Must Do At Work During National Stress Awareness Month

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by | Apr 4, 2024 | Admin, Caring for the Caregiver, Recruitment & Retention

by Bryan Robinson, PH.D. Contributor
author of Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World: A Guide to Balance

April is National Stress Awareness Month with the goal of raising awareness of the impacts of stress. According to the American Psychiatric Association, 26% of respondents anticipate they will be more stressed in 2023 and their mental health will be worse. Two out of five adults ranked their mental health from “fair” to “poor.” When you have fewer stressors, you have increased emotional stability, better moods and overall superior health. This month is a time to pay special attention to how you can remain stress-free throughout your workday, and you can do that in very simple ways. You don’t have to quit your day job or even work fewer hours. You can continue your daily work routines while practicing stress reducers at the same time. The one thing you must do is have a stress awareness plan that you can practice at work.

A Stress Awareness Plan Keeps Job Stress At Bay

My 2023 New Years Resolution was to do one kind thing each day for someone—especially strangers. It has heightened my awareness of how important and easy it is to be kind to others without taking extra time. Plus, how simple it is to practice and how good it makes me feel (and hopefully the other person) in just minutes. A work stress awareness plan has the same effect. Here’s how it works. Simply choose one thing to commit to each day that you can accomplish in three to five minutes to mitigate stress during your workday.

A max of five minutes of chill a day can have mental and physical benefits to keep you engaged, calm and energized on the job. These short work breaks lead to higher job engagement and performance as well as better sleep, increased immunity, lower blood pressure, improved digestion and increased emotional well-being. In fact, research from scientists at North Carolina State University shows the value of what I call Microchillers or taking what the researchers call Microbreaks throughout the workday. These short breaks—I recommend five minutes or less—are effective energy management strategies as simple as stretching, walking up and down stairs, gazing out a window at nature, snacking or having a five minute mindful meditation.

©2024 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Forbes. All rights reserved. For information on reprinting any of our articles, contact editor@therowanreport.com

No Nurse Shortage Here

Admin

by | Aug 16, 2023 | Admin, Caring for the Caregiver, Clinical, Marketing, Recruitment & Retention

by Tim Rowan, Editor

When Joseph Furtado, RN, COS-C, moved from one Phoenix-area Home Health agency to another earlier this year, he faced a seemingly insurmountable problem. The new place had dropped to a 600 census during the pandemic and got stuck there. Marketers had nurtured strong relationships with referring physicians, but the agency was turning away most of them for lack of nursing staff.

Over a span of 70 days, Furtado hired 60 nurses. As of our conversation this week, none of them have left.

Furtado, the Administrator at MD Home Health told us about his hiring philosophy that helped grow the company’s census to 1,000 and boost it to second largest in the area. “People want to work here because of the way we treat them,” he said. His plan includes several strategies:

  1. Pay clinicians what they are worth:
    • Free up funds for salaries by eliminating marketing positions
    • Free up funds for salaries by reducing most training costs
    • Reduce training costs by hiring only experienced nurses from other agencies who need little or no training
  2. Treat clinicians like professionals:
    • Center orientation days around presentations about company culture, not nuts and bolts of the job
    • Include presentations by top employees
    • Include presentations by actual patients, who talk about what the company has done for them
    • Eliminate obligatory mass training sessions. Replace them with as-needed meetings with nurse supervisors, sometimes in a patient home, sometimes in a nearby coffee shop.
    • The invitation is never “you need to stop doing this wrong” but “may I take you to lunch?”
    • Adapt schedule and pay policy to accommodate the needs of the professional
    • Replace minimum productivity requirement with mission-driven expectation and rewards
  3. Replace marketers with a single visit from the administrator:
    • We are the best, we will keep your patients out of the hospital, we will not turn away your referral
  4. Constantly monitor Indeed and other online job sites:
    • respond to new job seekers within seconds
    • schedule same-day interviews when possible

Favorite Hiring Story

Furtado enjoys telling the story of his favorite hiring win. “I was a few minutes late to call a top-notch, experienced Home Health nurse who showed up on Indeed,” he began. “When I called her, she had just parked her car and was on her way into an interview appointment with another agency. Thinking fast, I said, ‘What do I have to say to stop you from walking in that door?’ She couldn’t believe I was asking her to do that; actually, I couldn’t believe I had said it either. I told her our agency was the best place to work in Arizona and she should get back in her car. I kept her on the phone and said, ‘Let me hear you start your car.’ Then ‘Let me hear you drive away.’ She drove straight to my office and I hired her.

Today, she is our Director of Nursing.

Productivity Without Mandate

He told us that he has heard criticism from peers at various conferences and other meetings for his lack of a visit-per-week requirement. “I use a point system,” he explained to us. “A one-hour visit is one point, an OASIS visit is two, and there are other points for driving distance and other factors. We ask for an average of five points per day, and we pay bonuses when they exceed that. We tell clinicians during an interview that we offer a generous base salary, but that he or she can earn 20 or 30 thousand more than that. By doing that, we achieve two things. We hire an enthusiastic clinician, and we have the luxury of not having to hang onto underperforming nurses out of desperation.

Next Up

Now that MD Home Health has a full clinical staff, Furtado plans to implement a medical scribe system, based on the concept taught to him by his Medicare reimbursement consultant, Michael McGowan, a former CMS OASIS instructor and founding owner of OperaCare. During an OASIS visit, the field nurse consults live on a speaker phone with a QA nurse in the office. There is no computer between the nurse and the patient, and the OASIS is complete, quality checked, and ready to be submitted that day.

“We will make it optional,” Furtado said. “If it works as well as it has for Michael’s other clients, our hope is that more and more OASIS nurses will opt in once they see their co-workers going home at the end of the day with all their documentation already complete.”

©2023 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Home Care Technology: The Rowan Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com