LifeCourse: Lay Healthcare Workers Impact Quality of Life for Heart Failure Patients

Shippee, Tetyana; Shippee, Nathan D.; Mobley, Patrick; Fernstrom, Karl; Britt, Heather; Eckman, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.cardfail.2016.06.305

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Previous research has illustrated the use of lay health workers in community, rural, and low-income settings, often as care guides to assist with coordination of patient care with healthcare providers or provide education and social support [ 17 , 19 , 22 ]. Cain and colleagues [ 17 ] conducted semi-structured interviews to examine the use and experiences of lay health workers that served as support for patients with serious illnesses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies that has sought to evaluate the impact of lay health workers in the inpatient setting as an PLOS ONE alternative staffing model; as such, these findings contribute to our knowledge regarding innovative staffing models. Previous research has illustrated the use of lay health workers in community, rural, and low-income settings, often as care guides to assist with coordination of patient care with healthcare providers or provide education and social support [17,19,22]. Cain and colleagues [17] conducted semi-structured interviews to examine the use and experiences of lay health workers that served as support for patients with serious illnesses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous community researchers have utilized lay health workers to help fill clinical staffing shortages [17][18][19]. Lay health workers are defined as "any health worker carrying out functions related to healthcare delivery; trained in some way in the context of the intervention; and having no formal professional or paraprofessional certificated and degreed tertiary education" [18].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Evaluation of lay health workers on quality of care in the inpatient setting

Basnight,

Berry,

Capes

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aims To evaluate the impact of a lay health worker support role in the inpatient setting. Background Healthcare systems are facing critical nursing and nurse assistant staffing shortages. These disciplines can be challenging to recruit and retain, leading healthcare leaders to identify innovative staffing models. Whereas lay health workers have been used in the community and low-income setting, there is scant evidence of their use in the inpatient setting. We implemented a lay health worker role, called Patient Attendant Service Aides (PASAs), on two medical/surgical units at a community hospital. Methods A pre/post-implementation design was used for this study. An online survey was provided to nurses, nursing assistants, and PASAs on the two medical/surgical units to assess their satisfaction and perceptions of the role. Nursing quality metrics, patient satisfaction, and nursing and nursing assistant turnover were evaluated before and after implementing the role. Results The online survey showed that nurses and nursing assistants felt that PASAs helped offload their workload, allowing them to focus on nursing-related tasks. PASAs felt supported by the team and believed they were making a meaningful contribution to the unit. There were slight improvements in patient satisfaction, although not significant. There was a significant improvement in nursing turnover on Unit A, from 71.1% to 21.6% (p = 0.009). Conclusions This is one of the first studies to evaluate the use of lay health workers in the inpatient setting; we found this role to be a feasible way to offload tasks from clinical staff. This role may serve as a pathway for workforce development, as several PASAs are now enrolled in nursing assistant training. Nurse managers may consider using lay health workers in the inpatient setting as they face severe clinical staff shortages.

show abstract