“It is clear that a change in culture is needed - that both health care workers and health care organizations need to change the way they think about direct-care workers and, in particular, that the direct-care workers need to be seen as a vital part of the health care team,” says Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences.
The report, from the IOM’s Committee on the Future Health Care Workforce for Older Americans, also calls for concrete improvements in the quality of direct-care jobs. It advocates a three-pronged approach:
- More, and more effective, education and training;
- Increased wages and benefits; and
- Improvements to the work environment, such as empowerment strategies and culture change.
When the IOM talks, Congress generally listens. Past IOM reports have led to major improvements in our health care system - like the Nursing Home Reform Act of OBRA 1987, which grew out of an IOM report on long-term care. The current report is focused on how we can prepare for the coming baby boomer “age wave” by ensuring that the nation has an adequate and capable geriatric care workforce.
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