Quantitative Analysis of Staffing Retention Practices in Skilled Nursing Facilities

Abstract

Many long-term care facilities share a common issue of staffing challenges. his project focuses on finding root causes and solutions to these issues. The solution to these problems will be beneficial to management in nursing facilities when dealing with staffing issues and will be helpful for maintaining residents’ quality of life. When organizations are fully staffed, and especially when they have consistent staffing, residents receive better care. If staffing strategies and practices that correlate with desirable organizational performance can be identified, administrators will be more informed and better positioned to retain staff within their own facility. Student and faculty researchers completed Institutional Review Board training and data was collected from 59 nursing facilities in 6 states, primarily located in the upper Midwest (WI, MN, IA, IL, CO, AZ). A crowdsourcing method was used to identify strategies to address nursing assistant staffing challenges in nursing homes from among administrative leaders attending conferences and on several Facebook groups. From this, a checklist was developed to explore the frequency in which facilities were utilizing these strategies. A Management Practices to Support Workforce Stability questionnaire was adapted to use a Likert scale to assess perceptions of how important each item was to nursing assistant (CNA/NAR) retention. Administrative practicum students conducted interviews with each facility’s Nursing Home Administrator, Director of Nursing, and five CNAs/NARs to collect facility and participant demographic data, complete the check list, and assess perceptions of management practices on CNA/NAR retention. Nursing Home Star rating data including overall star rating, Health Inspection, Staffing Rating, Quality Measures Rating, and Health Inspection Date were also added to the dataset.