Landstuhl bolsters staff with volunteers

Landstuhl bolsters staff with volunteers
By Mark Abramson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, October 26, 2008

LANDSTUHL, Germany — A dozen sets of helping hands are on the way, thanks to a new program that trains volunteers to be certified nursing assistants.

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center officials have teamed with the American Red Cross to train the volunteers and place them at medical facilities close to where they live in Europe. They compressed the training into four weeks by having it five days a week.

Last week’s nursing assistant graduates are the first to complete the Red Cross program at a military base, although other military installations have expressed an interest in the program, said Susanne Harlandt, the Red Cross’s station chief at Landstuhl. Harlandt said officials at Fort Carson, Colo., want her to start a similar program when she transfers there next month.

"It’s like a nurse having a second set of hands," said Army nurse 1st Lt. Melanie Silva.

The nursing assistants are trained to take vital signs, handle patients who are in physical therapy, work with patients on dietary needs, feed and move patients around a hospital and perform other tasks that would allow nurses to focus on duties that require more extensive training, such as administering medicine and IVs.

"A CNA is really an integral person at the bedside taking care of a patient," said Army Col. Roy Harris, chief of clinical nursing at Landstuhl.

Training people to be nursing assistants is also is a good way to get them interested in becoming nurses, Harris said.

CNAs and nurses are in demand in the United States. According to the California Association for Nurse Practitioners, the CNA field is expected to grow by 393,000 people, or 14-20 percent between 2006 and 2016.

"There is a real concern throughout the health-care industry that the shortage of nurses and nursing assistants is becoming a national epidemic," Jill Olmstead, the association’s president, said in an e-mail.
go here for more
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=58403