New Home health care DON needs advice hiring/staffing STNAs

[ea.bednar]

Long story short. I'm a new DON for a home healthcare agency. I started working for them at day 1, with the offer of the DON upon JACHO accreditation. 6 months later JCAHO accreditation happened as of Thursday. Anyway, next they're going to hire me a profession nurse consultant, and pay for me to go to some medical/clinical leadership seminars, but until then I'm remain working with the administrator, but now I'm her boss. She said she could no longer tell me what to do, and I was responsible for MEDICAL issues, she's only their now to advise, and teach me about the regulations/legal requirements.

So first issue: Hiring AIDES. We need to hire an aide ASAP, we don't have one and we have patients that get AIDE care. We currently have very few available. All the aides we ever hire seem to work no longer than a few weeks at a time, and then it takes us at least a week to get a new one. This is no longer acceptable. I HAVE to stop aide missed visits. The administrator and myself are doing several interviews on monday for an immediate hire.

She wants me to focus on everything MEDICAL concerning the interviews, and this is going to be one of the only times she's going interview aides with me. I need to become independent.

Anyone have any tips on hiring aides? Any good medical questions to ask staff? Any way you've gotten aides to stick around? Any tips are getting them to respect you? I've never been a manager.

Anyone have advice on a way to monitor aides performance, and if they are even going to their visits. I need to think of ways to really prevent missed visits, and these aides are going to be a night mare.

Anything would be much appreciated!

Thanks!