Evaluation of an educational program for long-term care nursing assistants

OBJECTIVES: To determine if an educational program can improve knowledge and attitude among ancillary staff on end-of-life care issues in a long-term care facility. DESIGN: A pilot study using a pre- and post-test design prior to and at the completion of an education intervention. SETTING: A long-term care facility in suburban Philadelphia that has 150 assisted living beds and 53 nursing home beds. PARTICIPANTS: Long-term care ancillary staff including certified nursing assistants (called "care managers" at this facility), social workers, recreational therapists, and food service workers. INTERVENTION: The intervention was a novel educational program consisting of five in-service lectures with accompanying take home self-study modules for ancillary staff in long-term care entitled "Dignity in Dementia." MEASUREMENTS: Ancillary staff attitudes and knowledge on end-of-life issues in dementia were assessed with a knowledge and attitude questionnaire pre- and post-intervention. One-year follow-up questionnaires were administered to assess long-term maintenance of knowledge and attitude changes. RESULTS: Thirty-two ancillary staff completed the pre-intervention questionnaires. Twenty-nine ancillary staff completed the post-intervention questionnaires (90.6%). There was a significant change in the end-of-life knowledge level of the ancillary staff (P =.0270). Specifically, there was a significant change in one question dealing with dementia as a terminal disease (P = .006). There were also significant changes in the average attitude scores of the ancillary staff. (P = .0242). One-year follow-up revealed that both knowledge and attitude changes were maintained. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot project demonstrates that a staff educational program on end-of-life care for dementia residents can improve end-of-life knowledge and attitudes among long-term care ancillary staff and that this improvement can be maintained for up to 1 year. This intervention is easily reproducible in the long-term care setting. This project is an important step in helping improve end-of-life care for dementia residents in long-term care settings by improving the knowledge and attitudes of their caregivers.