The COVID Effect
Since March 2020, when the COVID pandemic hit, the nation has found a challenge in educating healthcare professionals. The healthcare program that has suffered the most may undoubtably be the certified nurse aide training program across the United States. This is because federal regulations state that CNA’s must obtain their clinical experience in a nursing home/ LTC facility.
Nursing homes around the nation closed their doors to educating CNA’s due to the fear of the spreading COVID. Many healthcare schools found themselves confused and frustrated with figuring out how to help students continue their education. Some states placed a temporary regulation allowing for CNA’s to continue their education without the clinical experience until a solid solution could be stablished. Here we are a year and a half later, and still no real solution to this problem has been established.
Georgia New CNA Clinical Regulations
The state of Georgia released new regulation on October 1st, 2021 providing a new scope of what LTC looks like. This broadened the type of facilities that CNA schools can send their students to so they can gain real hands on experience. Before the regulation, Georgia was very strict in only allowing students to gain hands on experience in a nursing home only. New regulations now state students can gain experience in the following settings:
- Nursing homes
- Long Term Acute Care Facilities
- Assisted Living Faculties
- Hospice Facilities
- Transitional Care Units
- Sub-Acute Units
- Hospitals
This new regulation, which includes multiple training settings, is long overdue. Few states such as California were already allowing students to gain experience in multiple settings such as hospice and home health long before the pandemic hit. Patients in these setting still requires ADL care which is the basis of the CNA’s education.
Why is this an issue?
The OBRA Acct od 1987, which regulates nurse aide education is long overdue for a change. Hopefully the strain of COVID will awaken the senses of federal law makers to re-examine the nurse aide educational component of this law. Including care settings outside of long term care is needed and will help us train the much needed future CNA’s!
Need help navigating this process?
This article was written by Victoria Randle MSN, NP-C, owner of The Secret Cocktail® We are a CNA school start up consulting firm. We help schools save time and money by providing expert consult to get their healthcare training school approval. We help with strategic growth for your CNA school and help you add additional programs like medical assistant, phlebotomy etc. For more info, please contact The Secret Cocktail® at 678-310-6168 or email us at [email protected]
If you are interested in starting a healthcare training school in your state, we can help! From CNA Schools, Phlebotomy Schools and more we can help launch a training school. Please contact us at [email protected] to learn more about our services or click here.
