Jewish Healthcare Foundation

Abstract The Teaching Nursing Home (TNH) is designed to improve the long-term care workforce and improve quality of care in nursing homes (NHs). The initiative is guided by an academic-practice partnership with mutual respect and shared learning and has multiple components: enhanced clinical rotations for nursing students with partner schools of nursing, implementation of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Age-Friendly Health System “4M” quality improvement model, and an online learning network. Following the principles of participatory research, NH staff were engaged in the selection of outcomes and in decisions regarding data collection. The University of Pittsburgh collected staff satisfaction at two nursing homes, and burnout at three NHs. Baseline surveys were conducted in the winter of 2022 using a combination of web-based and in-person paper administration, and follow-up surveys were collected in 2023, one year after implementation. Response rates ranged from 14% to 54%. A total of 190 surveys were available at baseline, and 183 at follow-up. All surveys were anonymous; cross-sectional analyses were conducted to identify trends. Baseline burnout scores varied considerably across the three participating NHs and improved at two of the three NHs (p = .0000). By contrast, job satisfaction was unchanged in one NH and declined in one NH across two dimensions (p= .0058; p = .01216). After the first year of implementation, the TNH program is showing some benefit in terms of reducing burnout, a factor associated with turnover. As the Age-Friendly NH program is disseminated, it is important to track the impact on the workforce.

Historically speech-language pathologists (SLPs) were a “fix-it”-focused rehabilitation profession. In recent years we have been drawn into decisions that are more challenging. Our profession has an increasing awareness of the complexity and subtleness required in decision making. How do other professions grapple with this complexity and in particular the concept of the “futility” of medical intervention? Perhaps the two of the most closely allied disciplines in this area are bioethics and medicine and I invited two colleagues to consider this topic with me. Dr. Nancy Rourke is a bioethicist with experience in Catholic and philosophical ethics, long-term care and end-of-life health care ethics. Dr. Tamara Sacks is a physician with experience in internal medicine, palliative care and hospice. We encourage the reader to step beyond the confines of the historically rehabilitation focused profession in order to gain understanding that will benefit our patients and families.

Journal Article Foreword to Proceedings from the May 18-19, 2006, Conference on Improving Hospital and Lab Safety Get access Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD 1Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, Pittsburgh, PA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Pathology Patterns Reviews, Volume 126, Issue suppl_1, 1 December 2006, Pages S5–S6, https://doi.org/10.1309/J7FYA20Y2W3C36E2 Published: 01 December 2006