Report from the National Nursing Assistant Survey
By Richard Shank
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, George Mason University, and the Centers for Disease Control published an overview of the first National Nursing Assistant Survey (NNAS).
The NNAS is an attempt to manage a growing workforce shortage, improve recruitment and retention efforts, and make as much information available as possible about the work of certified nursing assistants (CNAs). This study provides nationally representative estimates of the worker characteristics of CNAs (e.g., demographics, number of children, tenure, hourly wage), receipt of public benefits, use of health benefits, frequency of injuries, number of hours worked in a week, and hourly wage.
In all, 3017 CNAs working in nursing homes were interviewed for the study. In addition to the estimates listed above, NNAS provides information about recruitment, education, training, licensure, job history, management and supervision, resident relationships, and perceptions of the workplace.
The researchers found that nearly 33% of CNAs were receiving some form of public assistance. More than 50% had experienced at least one workplace injury in the past year, and almost one-fourth couldn’t work for at least one day following an injury. Forty-two percent of the CNAs in the sample report did not participate in employer-sponsored health care because they couldn’t afford the plan.
Finally, the survey found that the years of experience that CNAs had were not translating into meaningfully higher wages. CNAs with 10 or more years of experience were making just $2 more per hour than new aides that had just started in the field.
From this survey, it is clear that CNAs often work in suboptimal conditions and are likely to experience an imbalance of risks versus rewards, which likely drives the high turnover rates of the CNA workforce. CNAs make up the front-line of the nursing home workforce and provide the most detailed and physically demanding forms of care in the industry.
It is clear from this report that meeting the care needs of the growing nursing home population will require fixing the imbalance between the risk for workplace injury as well as low morale and the reward for providing high levels of service throughout one’s career. Without that fix, managers should expect high rates of turnover as the workforce shortage continues to grow.
Source: Squillace, M., Remsburg, R., Harris-Kojetin, L., Bercovitz, A., Rosenoff, E., Han, B. 2009. The national nursing assistant survey: Improving the evidence base for policy initiatives to strengthen the certified nursing assistant workforce. The Gerontologist 49(2): 185-197.
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