3 Steps For Turning Wound Care Into Staff Inspiration

Passion fatigue is real.

Staffing was a challenge in skilled nursing care prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and like all segments of health care, the problem has only worsened for SNFs since March 2020. But new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are nevertheless a shock to the system.

Since the start of the pandemic, the industry lost a startling 221,000 jobs — or 14% of its workforce — from March 2020 to October 2021. This is a significantly greater loss than any other health care segment, well ahead of the 8.2% drop in assisted living staff.

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“Chronic Medicaid underfunding, combined with the billions of dollars providers have spent to fight the pandemic, have left long-term care providers struggling to compete for qualified staff,” noted Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association (AHCA).

And while there is no single explanation for the drop, skilled nursing providers should pay attention to one important area of potential improvement: passion fatigue.

One key way to solve it? Wound care.

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What ‘passion fatigue’ means

Skilled nursing is a mission-driven field, helmed by some of the most passionate, dedicated professionals in health care. Passion fatigue occurs when the circumstances in the job are creating a net-negative experience for workers, such as skilled care bearing COVID’s brunt for close to two years now.

“Most people get into health care because they have a passion for it and they feel that it’s a calling,” says Matt Welik, founder and CEO of industry-leading wound care provider Healing Partners. “Yet because patients in long-term care are so often on a steady decline, it can weigh on a person’s heart and on their motivation and desire to keep giving and giving and giving — especially when it seems like they’re not seeing results.”

This decline can lead to an actual staff fatigue on a day-to-day basis, along with a long-standing fatigue, the type that drives down retention and pushes caregivers out of the industry.

Wound care combats passion fatigue, for two key reasons.

Wound care inverts the decline paradigm — and inspires staff

One of the major causes of passion fatigue in skilled nursing pre-dates the pandemic, and that is the natural challenge of a patient population on a steady decline. Unlike short-term rehab, the wins in long-term care are few.

Wound care is one of those wins. For SNF staff members, instead of thinking about a patient’s care journey as one on a slow decline, they can now think of it as the improvement of wounds.

As Welik puts it, as simply as possible: “Wounds can heal.”

Indeed, as SNF patient acuity has risen over the past decade, the need for strong wound care has also increased. That in turn increases the connection between wound care success and SNF staff inspiration.

“Even if a patient is in mental decline or overall physical decline, those patients and the staff around them can be inspired by seeing wounds improve,” he says. “Wound care is inspiring because we often take patients who are in a point of life where they are in decline, but we’re able to show that even if they are in decline they are able to still have strides forward in terms of some of their condition.”

Wound care reputation leads to more referrals

While the need for SNF wound care has grown, the SNF approach to wound care has not, Welik says. Facility approaches remain largely unchanged, even since the pandemic. So wound care success, often in concert with a partner such as Healing Partners, helps SNFs stand out.

Welik recalls a SNF partner that was cited for three severe issues: documentation, undiscovered wounds and not following orders correctly. Healing Partners introduced to the SNF its full program, and helped the SNF reach 100% documentation.

“We’ve implemented a skill education program to make sure that everybody — including their CNAs and all their floor nurses — know their role in the wound care process, and can easily identify the treatments and what products to use,” he says. “It’s just a complete turnaround in a facility, and pretty soon, the facility gains a reputation for providing great wound care.”

For SNFs seeking to eliminate passion fatigue through improved wound care, this type of partnership is a game-changer.

“When the building starts to deliver better care and the patient starts healing, it starts an upward spiral of passion and helps people reconnect with the broader mission of why they got into health care,” Welik says. “Success breeds more success. People feel more passionate and then a building gets a reputation for being good in wound care, and then the surgeon sees that reputation and sends more referrals. That raises the overall reputation of the facility.”

This article is sponsored by Healing Partners. To learn more about how Healing Partners can help build your wound care program and improve census, visit healing-partners.com.

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