(promoted from the diaries - joe)

My clinical direct service experience along with a recent master's in Interdisciplinary Studies (gerontology focus) has shown that two broad areas of direct care need to have priority:

1. Improving overall benefits for CNAs and other direct support personnel, thus attracting and retaining more workers. By this I mean not only pay and health/retirement benefits, but also to make real changes in the workplace so that the job is more attractive and fulfilling to more people.

2. Consistent with #1: To implement specific CNA/DCW training in communications; i.e.- listening, interview technique, basic counseling and behavior management skills. A wonderful frame for this person-centered, strengths-based approach is Reminiscence and Life Review. RLR is interdisciplinary, has a rich and rapidly growing scientific/professional (evidence-based) literature, it subscribes to and helps facilitate the needed paradigm change from the predominant "disease," "defect" or medical model to one that includes emotional, mental, and spiritual health of both care recipient and caregiver; and as a caregiver who has trained many others I can report that RLR strategies are cost-effective to implement and powerful enough as a concept to embrace and further the transformational culture change we are calling for and so badly need.

I am currently serving on the Oregon State Nursing Board's (OSBN) new CNA-2 Dementia Care Curriculum Task Force. Our group will be directly confronting mounting pressure to MOVE (no pun intended) beyond the medical model paradigm into one that addresses the concerns listed above. I am very excited to be a part of that process, and welcome any others who can support this movement to share with me/us any assistance or resources they might have. Please contact me at my listed email address or the OSBN directly if you are interested in this effort or in long-term care for any persons  struggling to maintain their personhood. The task force began lasy month and will be meeting for the next 4-6 weeks to plan the new CNA training program.