Are you having trouble maintaining consistency with your caregiver(s)? Are you experiencing a lot of turnover with your home health care staff? Does the front door of your home appear to be revolving and admitting new caregivers every weekend? Families tell me that they hate the thought of changing caregivers. Here is some professional advice on how to avoid turnover of personnel in your home.

Positive Reasons To Replace A Caregiver:

There are situations that validate a decision to change a caregiver. For instance, when a caregiver is unwilling or incapable of performing his or her job, and you have made several face-to-face attempts to discuss the performance issue(s) with this caregiver, then it is time to let that person go. Of course, any problems with the caregiver mistreating or harming the client are cause for immediate dismissal.

Contemplating Your Role In Caregiver Turnover:

If you are experiencing excessive turnover in caregivers, you need to ask yourself, “How might I be contributing to this problem?” The caregiver’s poor attitude or unsatisfactory performance may have started the problem. The caregiver may also have ended the problem by quitting. You need to consider your influence on the outcome as the problem unfolded. Here are some introspective questions:

Did I effectively communicate, in the beginning, my expectations and preferences to the caregiver? If not, was I too shy, too lazy, or too distracted by my own problems to communicate effectively? On the other hand, I decided that it is not my responsibility to communicate with the caregiver. Did I effectively and clearly delegate this task to my family or representative?

When I first noticed that the caregiver was not performing to the level of my expectations, did I then communicate my concerns to the caregiver? If not, then why?

What tone and choice of words did I use to communicate my initial concerns to the caregiver? Did I get a favorable response from the caregiver? If not, how can I handle this conversation differently the next time?

When the problem surfaced again, or evolved into other problems, how did I handle it? How did the caregiver react? What could I have done at that point to resolve or compromise on the issues and prevent termination of the caregiver?

Did I pay attention to the caregiver’s concerns or complaints? Did I analyze his or her side of the problems? If the caregiver quit, did I understand the real precipitants?

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