A stigma that has taken hold in the nursing industry for years has been that the hospital is the place to be. The home, many previously believed, was where health care workers ended up just before they retired.
Much of that notion is tied to the perception that the action in health care is found within the four walls of the hospital. But that’s becoming less true, which makes the need for that stigma to be erased even more urgent.
So as health care fundamentally changes and more care is delivered in patients’ homes, education needs to follow, Karilyn Van Oosten, the VP of strategic business development at Unitek Learning, told Home Health Care News.
“It all starts with awareness,” Van Oosten said. “We do a lot of the rotations in those home-based settings. So now these students, they understand what that would look like very early on instead of it being an afterthought. And we are teaching our students that health care is not just centered around acute care.”
Founded in 1992, Unitek Learning is the parent company for five learning institutions in the areas of health care, nursing and emergency medical services. Part of its education process is maintaining partnerships with health care providers in order to give students real-world experience.
As Unitek surveyed its partners on the challenges, it realized it had to change its own processes to address the greater importance of home-based care.
“Last year, we went ahead and consciously decided to dive into that, because before, Unitek and all of its subsidiaries were really looking at it from a student perspective,” Van Oosten said. “But now we’re taking another bigger scope. We’re looking at those partners and collaborators that we already have, finding out what their challenges are and then helping them solve them.”
In order to address the workforce shortage in home-based care, Unitek has partnered with LeadingAge California and the California Association of Health Facilities (CAHF). LeadingAge, in particular, advocates on behalf of home-based care providers across the country.
A lot of it starts with a basic acknowledgment of the home as a major site of care.
“The biggest concern for these providers is attracting talent and then retaining it,” Van Oosten said. “And it’s also upskilling. Even though they might get talent, the talent might not have exactly what they need.”
That’s why Unitek is trying to create pipelines to these home-based care providers. With more exposure, the organization hopes more students will take a liking to that area of focus.
And Unitek is bullish on that, thanks to the likewise shifting trend of how millennials view work in general.
“Some of these jobs might be even more appealing than the acute care setting,” Van Oosten said. “Because we’ve noticed that now there is a trend where flexibility is key and workforce conditions are key. There’s individuals that are looking at those types of shifts and like them, and don’t want to be in such a structured setting. So in that way, the home health care arena is definitely an opportunity for them.”
The wide range of partners are exposed to the students early, as students are exposed early to them. The providers then can pick students they feel have promise for a career that may be tied to a home-based setting.
That makes recruiting and retaining easier, as students are prepared properly. It also makes upskilling far less of a consideration.
“So they already know that when these students graduate, they’re ready to go,” Van Oosten said. “And they’re ready to go in that particular area that they’re needed. So that upskilling, that wouldn’t need to happen, because it would happen on the job during training.”
Having this pipeline for providers also addresses a problem from the provider’s end, which is feeling like recruitment issues are out of their control. Instead, they have a cohort of students, and they know they can immediately hire 10 to 15 of them, for example.
“We’ve noticed in the past — for over 20 years — the focus was hospital, hospital, hospital,” Van Oosten said. “Everything was about acute care, and now we’re seeing that it’s more of that holistic approach that’s sought after. There are many different ways to be able to approach [care] and different settings that you can practice. It doesn’t have to be confined to the hospital.”
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