Non skilled home agency educators-help

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Hi, I need some help here. I accepted a job at one non skilled home care agency (PA state) as an educator. The problem is when I started there was no nurse to teach me what to do or to give an idea how everything works. So, I sort of have to figure out everything by myself. But now there is another problem, i have no previous home care experience, so you can imagine how frustrated and mad at myself I feel. The administrator is rarely at the office to answer my questions. I was wondering if there is anyone working in this field, who can guide me or answer my questions, so at least I am familiar with standards and regulations. For example, the initial HHA training should be 75 hrs in PA, but our program is not that long. New applicants have to watch videos (8 hrs long maybe), then I have to answer their questions and visually show how to lift a person in a bed for ex or do partial bath. The administrator is sure that as we are non skilled agency the training is about 40 hrs, but anyway 8 hrs is not even close to 40. And also, she keeps saying that a non skilled agency does not have to have RN, but is it really so? Does anyone know?...So, I'm just so confused with this position. I enjoy education process and getting new experience, and the pay is way better than i had working at LTC, but I'm scared for my license. Anyways, if anyone who is doing similar job can answer my questions, I would greatly appreciate it!!!

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Work in home health, but not as an educator. As for the caregiver training, 75 hours does seem excessive. Are you sure this is not the amount of training a layperson receives in order to get the HHA certificate? Until you get a definitive answer from someone who knows the deal for PA, I would not worry about that length of a training program unless you intend to train HHA's from off the street, and then there is probably more to the process. Contact whatever authority in PA provides the HHA certificates. For your own new employee/annual training purposes, I would start with a 12 or 40 hour program. Obtain a HHA/CNA text and take 12 or more HHA/CNA tasks out of there, prepare some classroom session/video/online access or whatever for each task, and be prepared to document attendance/mastery of the task. Start with 12 hours (I pick 12 because I believe in my state, CNA/HHA are required to get that amount of inservices per year). If you need to add more once you find out the real deal, then add to your core 12 hour program. At least start with that, and as you find out things, you can adjust as you go along. Best advice I can offer at this time, other than to seek the assistance of NRSKaren, a moderator at this site, who, I believe, is quite knowledgeable concerning PA rules/regulations. Hope someone else can offer more help.

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Work in home health, but not as an educator. As for the caregiver training, 75 hours does seem excessive. Are you sure this is not the amount of training a layperson receives in order to get the HHA certificate? Until you get a definitive answer from someone who knows the deal for PA, I would not worry about that length of a training program unless you intend to train HHA's from off the street, and then there is probably more to the process. Contact whatever authority in PA provides the HHA certificates. For your own new employee/annual training purposes, I would start with a 12 or 40 hour program. Obtain a HHA/CNA text and take 12 or more HHA/CNA tasks out of there, prepare some classroom session/video/online access or whatever for each task, and be prepared to document attendance/mastery of the task. Start with 12 hours (I pick 12 because I believe in my state, CNA/HHA are required to get that amount of inservices per year). If you need to add more once you find out the real deal, then add to your core 12 hour program. At least start with that, and as you find out things, you can adjust as you go along. Best advice I can offer at this time, other than to seek the assistance of NRSKaren, a moderator at this site, who, I believe, is quite knowledgeable concerning PA rules/regulations. Hope someone else can offer more help.

Thank you for you answer!I'm almost positive about 75 hrs because that's what it says on the certificates I have to sign issued by our agency, which cannot be transferred to other agencies, that a person had 75 he training. And that's what state requires for HHA training. And the thing is we have a lot of ppl coming to the agency who wants to be direct care workers to their parents/grandparents etc. And my administrator wants everyone to stay regardless test results,which is ridiculous because the majority of these ppl fail the test!

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From what you describe in your second post, it would appear that PA requires 75 hours to obtain the HHA certificate and that you are providing the entire training program at your agency. A daunting task. You need to find a copy of the entire curriculum and begin to implement it. I would imagine that it can be divided into didactic and clinical experience. You have your work cut out for you if you intend to do this correctly and not just create a paper trail that is essentially useless if the state regulatory agency catches you falsifying info.

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whether or not the agency requires an RN or not is a moot point, if you were hired as an RN you are held to that standard period. When I worked home health we had quite a bit of training in all the regulations, usually requiring several days to a week. Does yohr office have a reference book of regs, that you could refer to?

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