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Nine Steps to Consistent Assignment

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  1. First, what do you really know about your residents/clients and your staff? Harvey McKay, famous coach and businessman, has a tool called The Mackay 66 in which his salesmen over time can find out more about their clients and prospective clients so they become less of a salesman and more of a business partner. Adapt this tool to find out more about your client/resident and staff members. It will help when you want to match a client/resident with a caregiver.
  2. Don't cross-train staff with the idea that everyone should get used to taking care of all of the residents. Management may like it but the residents/clients do not.
  3. Involve residents/clients in the hiring process. Don't laugh. It is being done.
  4. If staff is stable good for you. Allow new residents/clients and their families to meet their potential caregivers so that they start to form an opinion of who they might want to care for them.
  5. Now gather the CNAs together, all shifts.
  6. Adapting a technique presented at the American Health Care Association conference, ask the group to rank each of the residents by their "degree of challenge for care" with No. 1 being relatively "easy" to care for and No. 5 being very difficult (time-consuming, emotionally draining, etc.).
  7. Allow the CNAs to select their own assignments.
  8. Have the caregiver and the resident/client meet to discuss the relationship. If both parties are comfortable, implement the assignment. If not, try to remove any roadblocks before going back to previous steps and re-assigning staff.
  9. Meet quarterly to evaluate the assignments.

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