Top Ten Care Home Mistakes
Majority of the care homes do a great job. Most people consider working in care homes as a such a rewarding job. When you do it on a daily basis, it is easy to forget the ‘big picture’ of what they should be aspiring to deliver. Without any doubt, the people we care for deserve the best possible care. I am going to list the Top Ten Care Home Mistakes from an operational point of view.
1. Care Manager not attending the daily handover
For a care home to perform very well, the manager should have an excellent understanding of what is happening on the floor. Some managers do consider this as a 9 to 5 job. Handover for most of the care homes does occur at 8 am in the morning. Manager attending the handover and getting a vibe about the teamwork is an essential thing to do on a daily basis. Watch out for this care home mistake – Handover is the best time for you to instill some positive inspiration to your team.
2. Publishing staff rota late
Another care home mistake is doing the staff rota very late. Ideally, staff rota should be done a minimum of four weeks in advance. If you are unable to do your staff rota four weeks in advance, that means your staffing is not right. You need to address this as a matter of priority. It is important to remember that doing the staff rota in advance will give a chance for the staff to swap the shift as required and plan their life well ahead. It will also provide them with an opportunity to enjoy their personal life as well. If you are a manager and worry about some people working together, it may be pointing out towards the negative culture of the care home or staff not having enough ability to run the floor.
3. Care Plans not updated
Updating the care plans on a regular basis is one of the challenges that most care homes face. Some care homes do leave this responsibility only with the manager or the deputy manager. Updating the care plans for many residents by only two or three people is one of the worst things that you can do for your home. Share this responsibility and empower your staff to join this process. Create a key worker system to delegate the care plan updating. If they focus too much on paperwork, the manager will get disconnected from the care at the floor level.
4. Lack of teamwork
Some care homes do have a problem of staff not getting along very well each other. It can be due to several reasons such as underperformance of the staff, language problems, different ethnic origin and other hierarchical issues. It is essential for care managers to identify this care home mistake within your team and promote a culture of inclusion within the organisation. The manager should be an extremely neutral person to start with who shouldn’t have any type of favouritism towards anyone.
5. Not proactive in dealing with negative staff
One or two ‘rotten apples’ within your team is enough to spoil the entire team. Some people get up from the bed on a daily basis to make the life worse for others. If you have one of these people working for you, it is high time to get rid of them as soon as possible. Your excellent staff can also be manipulated easily by these people. If you do not proactively deal with the negativity within your team, they will lose confidence in your leadership. Be courageous and aggressive in dealing with negativity and promoting a positive staff culture.
6. Staff not getting enough rest
Working as a healthcare assistant or as a staff nurse in a care home is not that easy. Staff prefer to do 12-hour shifts to get extra days off. A large proportion of people working in care homes do extra shifts to meet their financial needs. The number of hours can be between 30 and 60 hours a week. Managers fall into this care home mistake by calling staffs who are willing to do more shift on a regular basis but forgets the fact that they also need rest. It is essential to give your staff a day off after a long day if possible. Healthy and less stressed staff provide high-quality care.
7. Not listening to staff
I have heard enough stories about the management not listening to their team. The problem with people working in the healthcare sector is they don’t like to complain about anything. They could bear with any challenges. They express concerns to the management only when it becomes a worst-case scenario. As a manager, you shouldn’t disregard this because what your staff reporting is just the tip of the iceberg. If you don’t dig deeper into the issue, you will lose the opportunity to correct it and fall into this care home mistake. You should inform your staff what you did in response to their concern. It’s easy for your team to assume that you haven’t done anything if you haven’t told them what you have done about it. So next time when one of your staff report a concern to try to find out how severe the problem can be and address it as soon as possible.
8. Letting good staff leave
You can categorise your staffing into three groups. Laggards, Satisfied and Engaged. The laggards are the people who are not at all interested In whatever improvements you make in your care home. Satisfied type of staff is content about their job but not very active about making changes. You want the majority of the team to be in the third category – the engaged group. Engaged staff will take your organisation to the next level by implementing improvements. You want to find out why one of your committed staff is leaving and do your best to retain them and avoid this care home mistake.
9. Short of staff
How does short of staff become a problem for your care home? It becomes a problem when there is not enough staff to look after the needs of your residents. Having short of staff on a particular shift will create an extra job for the rest of the staff and will bring the team morale down. Managers need to be proactive and demanding to ask for resources to make sure that they have enough staff to run the floor. Recruitment and retention is a massive problem within the care industry. Try doing proactive recruitment rather than reactive when you have an immediate vacancy to prevent this care home mistake. Cost and time of recruiting are way higher than retaining your existing staff. If you think that your team has worked without having enough staff due to unexpected reasons, make sure you appreciate them for their hard work. You should also put measures in place so that your team will not have to work like that again.
10. Poor communication
Poor communication can easily tarnish the reputation of your care home by anyone in your organisation. Constant interactions happen between the staff, the staff and management, the staff and residents, management and outside organisations and with the relatives. You do not want to get this wrong. I am surprised why care homes don’t do training on effective customer service. Do a workshop with your staff to agree on which words can be used and cannot be used in your care home. Ideally, it would make sense if a manager or a senior staff deal with all the communication with outside professionals and relatives to maintain the consistency.
This article is to make you aware of the common care home mistakes. However, the real heroism is learning from the mistakes and improving on a consistent basis. There is no 100% perfect care home. You should always be on a mission to deliver the best possible care for the people you look after.
