Training home care paraprofessionals. Areas for consideration.

Well-trained personnel are a credit to their agency. They tend to take more pride in a job well done, are a public relations asset to the agency, and provide a better quality of service to the client. It is important that administrators and managers understand and convey throughout their organizations that training for paraprofessionals and supervisors in home care is crucial to the delivery of quality care. Furthermore, a competent staff person is valuable to a home care agency in the area of risk management. It is a wise investment on the part of an agency to prepare staff well for the tasks they will perform, as this preparation reduces the possibility of improper care to clients and thus reduces the liability risks of the agency. At the time of this writing the new regulations for home health aide training under Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) were still not available; however, we do know that these new regulations will play an important role for standardizing training and competency of the paraprofessional home care worker. While there may be some difficulty in the implementation of these regulations, in the long run they will benefit the field of home care.