Certified nurse aides provide approximately 65% of care to more than 1.4 million older adults residing in nursing homes who have been diagnosed with 1 or more chronic illnesses or debilitating conditions. Licensed nurses rely on nurse aides to report potentially harmful status changes in geriatric residents. Nurse aides often receive limited education and do not have a structured care process to guide them in their practice in the geriatric population. The purpose of this educational quality improvement project was to develop a geriatric-specific nurse aide care process to increase the knowledge of student nurse aides regarding processes to identify and observe potentially harmful status changes in geriatric residents, and what changes to report immediately to a licensed nurse. The knowledge-to-action model was used to address the practice problem and to guide the translation of this evidence-based project into practice. The methodology used to guide data collection and analysis was a 1-group, quasi experimental, pretest/posttest design to compare participants' knowledge before the intervention with their learning outcomes after the educational intervention was implemented. The findings revealed an increase in the knowledge of student nurse aides after the educational intervention. The project may promote social change on an organizational level by demonstrating the need for a structured geriatric care process for nurse aides prior to their entry into the long-term care workforce to improve care outcomes for geriatric residents. The project may involve social change at the state level because incorporating this process may require additional hours in the nurse aide education program curriculum.

It is estimated that by 2020 there will be 2.8 million long-term care beds in residential facilities, staffed primarily with nursing assistants as the front-line care providers. The American Healthcare Association 2012 staffing survey showed that the median annual turnover rate for nursing assistants in the United States is 51.5%. High rates of turnover are associated not only with poorer quality of care but also with increased costs for facilities. The purpose of this project was to understand characteristics that are associated with long-term employment in the nursing assistant role by describing the personality characteristic of empathy in the nursing assistant population with career longevity. The practice-focused question focused on the level of empathy among nursing assistants in long-term care who have been in their role 3 years or longer. The purposive sample group included 60 nursing assistants from 10 long-term care facilities in New Jersey. Data were collected using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index instrument, which comprises 4, 7-item subscales that consider aspects of the global concept of empathy. The overall findings of this study did not establish a significant relationship between empathy and retention; however, notable shifts in the empathy subscale scores of participants related to gender and length of tenure were noted. The results of this study could promote positive social change by helping administrators select nursing assistants suited to working in long-term care facilities, which may result in lower turnover and improved patient outcomes among the population in long-term care.

The research purpose was to investigate the relationship between motivation (i.e., Physiological needs, safety and security, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization) determined through the Need Satisfactory Inventory (NSI), gender (i.e., Male, Female) determined through the demographic survey, and the test score on the Illinois Nurse Aide Competency Examination (INACE), i.e., overall INACE performance and overall INACE performance based on six duty areas (i.e., communicating information, performing basic nursing skills, performing personal care, performing basic restorative skills, providing mental health-services, and providing for resident’s rights) of nurse aide students. The study explored the relationship between variables using a non-experimental, associational, and descriptive approach. All the research questions and hypotheses explored the relationship between variables (i.e., motivation and multiple-choice INACE performance) concerning the mean of overall INACE performance and means of INACE performance based on six duty areas using associational inferential statistics (Pearson correlation coefficient r). Keywords: Motivation, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Academic Achievement, Nurse Aide Students, Standardized Multiple-Choice Academic Test, Multiple Choice Questions, Academic Success, and Academic Performance

The research purpose was to investigate the differences between learning preferences (i.e., Active-Reflective, Sensing-Intuitive, Visual-Verbal, and Sequential-Global) determined by the Index of Learning Style and gender (i.e., Male and Female) in regards to standardized achievement multiple-choice test performance determined by the Illinois Nurse Aide Competency Examination (INACE), i.e., overall INACE performance and INACE performance based on six duty areas (i.e., communicating information, performing basic nursing skills, performing personal care, performing basic restorative skills, providing mental health-services, and providing for resident’s rights) of nurse aide students. The study explored the relationship between variables using a non-experimental, comparative and descriptive approach. The nurse aide students who completed the Illinois approved Basic Nurse Aide Training (BNAT) and 21-mandated skills assessment and were ready to take the Illinois Nurse Aide Competency Examination (INACE) in the month of October 2018 and December 2018 at various community colleges across the state of Illinois were the participants of the study. A sample of 800 nurse aide students were selected through stratified (north, central, and south) random sampling out of which N = 472 participated in the study representing the actual sample.

The purpose of this study was to determine the contribution of nursing auxiliaries towards health care services against their scope of practice. Nursing auxiliaries practising within the Elim, Letaba, Malamulele, Nkhensani, Shiluvana and Tintswalo hospitals in the Gazankulu Health Administration, in the Northern Transvaal Province, constituted the target population. The findings revealed that nursing auxiliaries are not functioning strictly according to their scope of practice. They are an essential component of nursing services in Gazankulu by rendering a major contribution towards health care services in fulfilling their scope of practice-role. Apart from their prescribed practice-role, they are also engaged in activities that should be performed by enrolled and professional nurses as well as doctors and general assistants. There appears to be a need for education for all categories of nursing staff regarding the scope of practice of nursing auxiliaries for improving the effective utilisation of this category of nursing personnel / M.A. (Nursing Science) / Health Studies

The purpose of this study was to determine the contribution of nursing auxiliaries towards health care services against their scope of practice. Nursing auxiliaries practising within the Elim, Letaba, Malamulele, Nkhensani, Shiluvana and Tintswalo hospitals in the Gazankulu Health Administration, in the Northern Transvaal Province, constituted the target population. The findings revealed that nursing auxiliaries are not functioning strictly according to their scope of practice. They are an essential component of nursing services in Gazankulu by rendering a major contribution towards health care services in fulfilling their scope of practice-role. Apart from their prescribed practice-role, they are also engaged in activities that should be performed by enrolled and professional nurses as well as doctors and general assistants. There appears to be a need for education for all categories of nursing staff regarding the scope of practice of nursing auxiliaries for improving the effective utilisation of this category of nursing personnel / M.A. (Nursing Science) / Health Studies