Authors (including presenting author) :
Leung WSS(1), Chan SKL(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Nursing Services Division, Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital
Introduction :
In light of the increasing attrition rate of Care-related Supporting Staff (Patient Care Assistant – In-Patient Services) (PCA-IPS), many resources have been spent on Recruiting & Selection (R&S) and Compensation & Benefits (C&B). However, only limited information has been known about the reason why PCA-IPS is leaving our industry. Although performing exit interview helps us to understand the reason of their turnover, it was always too late and issues could not be well follow-up and make changes. Therefore, a job satisfaction survey was implemented in 2016 targeted to all PCA-IPS who were newly joined PYNEH in order to understand challenges they were facing and explore ways to help them from their own perspective.
Objectives :
1. To understand the challenges faced by a newly recruited PCA-IPS in PYNEH.
2. To explore ways to help newly recruited PCA-IPS for better adaptation during their transition period.
Methodology :
The survey design was used to measure the satisfactory level of six aspects which include understanding of job responsibilities, understanding departmental organization and structure, performing daily tasks, understanding patient’s needs, handling of emergency situation and performing clinical task independently (Table 1). Also, two open-ended questions were asked about the challenges they perceived and what could hospital level do to help them during these transition period.
The survey was sent to all PCAIIIA-IPS on their first day of work in PYNEH with a returned envelop, it was voluntary based and they could send back the envelope directly to Nursing Services Division (NSD) without supervisor’s acknowledgment so that they could answer freely without fear of embarrassment.
Result & Outcome :
There were 178/311 (57.2%) survey collected from January 2016 to December 2019. The top three problems they found it most dissatisfying were – “handling of emergency situation” 83/178 (46.6%); “performing clinical task independently” 58/178 (32.6%) and “understanding departmental organization and structure” 34/178 (19.1%). While the challenges they perceived can be categorized in two categories, i) Work-related issues (such as difficult to understand some English medical jargons, adaptation to shift duty patterns, memorization of equipment placement & cleansing workflow); ii) Communication issues (such as handling of patient’s complaints, conflict with colleagues/ patients). In addition, they reckoned that hospital management could help them to have a better adaptation during the transition period in two different approaches, i) to provide more coaching time for them to familiar with the ward environment and allow time for them to observe others to perform clinical tasks before assigning them to work independently; ii) to provide more training on communication techniques, basic English medical jargons, videos showing simple nursing knowledge and introduce different names of common medical equipment.
CONCLUSION
With the significant result of the survey, it is recommended that hospital should provide targeted training on hands-on clinical skills practice, workshop on communication skills and lesson on common English medical jargons. Besides, ward supervisors should provide more coaching time for PCA-IPS before assigning them to work independently.
In 2019, PYNEH NSD has started to implement a PCA Orientation Booklet so as to provide a well-structured orientation program for care-related supporting staff, and also to formulate a systematic coaching process for frontline supervisors. These could not only help new joined staff to have better preparation for new work challenges, but also improve their job satisfactory rate so that patient’s safety can be ensured and lower attrition rate can be achieved.
