Jasmine Travers Altizer

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INTRODUCTION: Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) constitute the largest segment of the nursing home workforce, with over 50% of the dementia care workforce comprised of racial and ethnic minoritized individuals. Despite their critical role in dementia care, CNAs face significant inequities in terms of salary, treatment, and working conditions. To enhance equity and improve working conditions, valid and reliable measures are essential for nursing homes to assess their current environment, track progress, and refine strategies. This paper synthesizes existing measures and tools that assess equity-related constructs among CNAs. METHODS: We conducted an environmental scan to identify existing measures, tools, and instruments assessing equity-related constructs among CNAs in nursing homes. Our search focused on nine key equity-related constructs: training, job satisfaction, compensation, staffing/workload, burnout, working conditions/environment, role, leadership, and turnover. RESULTS: Our environmental scan resulted in 15 measures, tools, or instruments relevant to CNA equity. These instruments focused on job satisfaction, retention and turnover, job commitment, leadership experiences, and work environment. Sixty percent of these tools lacked reported validity or reliability data. While the remaining 40% demonstrated strong psychometric properties, overall, the methodological rigor of available measures is inconsistent. A critical gap in the existing literature is the absence of tools measuring burnout or workload, among CNAs. DISCUSSION: The identified measures/tools offer potential for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions addressing CNA equity. However, it is imperative to establish the validity and reliability of these instruments across diverse populations, particularly among racial and ethnic minoritized groups, and develop or adapt tools that measure burnout and workload for CNAs. Furthermore, a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms driving these inequities through qualitative data is crucial for developing targeted and impactful interventions. Highlights: Measuring equity among CNAs is important to evaluate strategies intended to improve equity. The identified tools enable assessment of how CNAs feel about important constructs that are related to equity. We found no tools that comprehensively measured workload or burnout experienced by CNAs.

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Background and Objectives: Despite the importance of provider continuity across healthcare settings, continuity among home care workers who provide hands-on long-term care is understudied. This project describes home care worker continuity, identifies factors associated with increased continuity, and examines associations between continuity and client outcomes. Research Design and Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of clients receiving Medicaid-funded home-based long-term care (n = 3,864) using insurance plan and home care agency data from a large nonprofit organization. We estimated home care worker continuity for clients between 6-month clinical assessments using Bice-Boxerman scores. We then used generalized estimating equations to model associations between home care worker continuity and (1) client characteristics (e.g., cognitive impairment), and (2) client functional, health, and psychosocial outcomes. Results: While home care worker continuity was lowest for clients receiving the most weekly care hours, a range of continuity existed across all levels of care need. Those who were male, older, Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American, cognitively impaired, and functionally impaired had lower continuity. Higher home care worker continuity was significantly associated (p

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Moral distress and moral injury among health workers yield adverse physical, psychological, and labor force outcomes. Research is limited on how psychiatric health care assistants (PHAs) experience these issues. In this multimethod study, we conducted a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews to examine moral distress and injury among PHAs. Almost half screened positive for moral injury. Three qualitative themes emerged: 1) hierarchies prevent contributions to care; 2) trust as a factor in de-escalating patient violence; and 3) navigating psychosocial challenges. Further research is recommended to investigate how to best support and inform practice and policy changes for PHAs.

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INTRODUCTION: The professional caregiver workforce (nursing assistants and personal care aides) is critical to quality of care and quality of life in nursing home (NH) and assisted living (AL) settings. The work is highly stressful, so improving responses to stress in this workforce could contribute to satisfaction and retention. This research developed a coping measure appropriate for the diverse professional caregiver workforce. METHODS: A multistage process identified and refined existing and new items. Ten racially and ethnically diverse professional caregivers advised on item selection and refinement. Subsequently, using an online QR code-accessed questionnaire, data were collected from 391 professional caregivers from 10 NHs and 3 AL communities in three states, yielding a sample that was 87% female, widely distributed in age and experience, and racially/ethnically diverse (42% Black, non-Hispanic/Latinx; 25% White, non-Hispanic/Latinx; 20% Hispanic/Latinx; 7% Asian, non-Hispanic/Latinx; and 21% born outside the United States). Analyses examined psychometric properties and principal components analysis identified factors within which items and scales aggregated. RESULTS: The final instrument, named the Long-Term Care Cope (LTC Cope), includes 26 items aggregated into six factors, which explained 60% of the variance: avoidance (five items, loadings 0.58–0.76); adaptive psychological strategies (six items, loadings 0.33–0.89); active engagement (five items, 0.47–0.89); maladaptive psychological strategies (three items, loadings 0.90–0.93); actions to minimize emotional impact (four items, loadings 0.28–0.74); and substance use (three items, loadings 0.61–0.88). Respondents often reported using multiple items within multiple factors when responding to stressful situations at work. DISCUSSION: The coping strategies of professional caregivers are highly individual, with caregivers tending to utilize multiple strategies. The LTC Cope instrument and its component subscales are promising for future research to improve understanding of stress-related coping in this diverse workforce and inform and evaluate interventions. Highlights: A new measure was developed to help us better understand how professional caregivers (nursing assistants and personal care aides) deal with work-related stress. Professional caregivers in nursing homes and assisted living tend to use multiple approaches to deal with job stress. Ways professional caregivers cope with stress vary widely—some address problems directly, some try to deal with the emotional toll of the work, and others involve avoiding the problems or their emotional consequences.

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Background/Purpose: To characterize the representation of racial and ethnic minoritized faculty in leadership positions at the top 50 National Institutes of Health-ranked academic nursing institutions. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional observational study to characterize the racial/ethnic composition of academic leaders, including those in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions from September 2020 to December 2020. Discussion: Among the 409 leaders, the sample was predominantly composed of females (86.6%), White leaders (80.9%), affiliated with public institutions (75.1%), and in the southern region (42.1%). Exactly 13.6% were from minoritized groups. Minoritized leaders were less likely to hold dean and higher executive positions than their nonminoritized counterparts (p < .002). DEI leadership positions were mostly concentrated in lower executive positions (e.g., director) and primarily consisted of minoritized leaders (>60%). Conclusion: Underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minoritized individuals in academic nursing leadership persists, necessitating structural interventions within nursing academia to promote inclusivity. Achieving this goal requires a concerted investment in diversifying academic nursing leadership and ensuring positions that minoritized leaders are in, hold weight.