A Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) at a long term care facility uses point of care CNA systems as part of his or her role in caring for residents, ensuring a high level of care is given while addressing their daily needs. While a CNA is responsible for the everyday running of a facility’s floor, their typical activities include:
Feeding, bathing, and dressing residents
Some elderly residents need additional help with their ADLs (Activities of Daily Living). It is the responsibility of CNAs to assist residents with bathing, dressing, and feeding when required.
Taking resident vital signs
Depending on the level of training, some CNAs are responsible for taking and recording a resident’s vital signs. These recordings are entered into a facility’s long term care software, allowing for accurate recordings which can be accessed when needed.
Serving meals, making beds, and maintaining cleanliness
CNAs work on the frontline, therefore they are in regular contact with residents, which allows them to build meaningful relationships with residents. On a typical shift, CNAs will serve residents their meals, make their beds, and clean their rooms.
Observing resident changes
Because CNAs work so closely with residents, they are able to observe any changes to a resident’s physical or psychological condition. Any changes, whether good or bad, are recorded in their nursing home software, usually through tools like point of care. CNAs also measure a resident’s recovery time by tracking any long-term conditions in their eMAR software using a point of care CNA module. This is why it is so important for facilities to ensure proper documentation in their long term care software.
The Importance of Point of Care Documentation
A CNA’s primary responsibility is to deliver exceptional care while ensuring residents have a high quality of life. Facilities that are still on paper tend to struggle with keeping accurate resident records, as this antiquated method leads to missing information, illegible handwriting, entry errors, and other mistakes that impact resident outcomes and creating liability problems for the facility.
While it is important to document activities in every industry, in long term care, it is especially important, as it tends to be the main form of communication between staff during shift changes. Therefore, it is imperative that the resident notes are accurately documented in the long term care software system for the incoming staff to provide adequate care.
There are tools that facilities can use to improve their documentation process within an assisted living software system, particularly if they are willing to embrace modern technology and upgrade to an eMAR software (electronic medication administration system). Typical eMAR software highlights Point of Care documentation (POC) to ensure resident data is accurately recorded.
For a test drive of our user-friendly point of care system, click here.
There are three prominent features of electronic point of care documentation that make the lives of nurses and CNAs a lot easier:
- POC Charting
POC charting is particularly useful for facilities, as it allows CNAs to accurately record and access residents’ data through their senior living software. Experience Care’s POC charting conveniently stores all resident data on a centralized LTC software system, therefore allowing authorized staff to access the data anywhere, anytime. The assisted living management software has the capacity to connect multiple devices, therefore, improving efficiency by allowing facility staff to check on residents’ vitals, ADLs, and pain levels whenever necessary.
- A Kardex built into the system
A concern many facilities have is the amount of time their staff waste due to paperwork. CNAs are
often responsible for numerous residents. They need to access resident data quickly through the nursing home EHR in order to perform their duties. If CNAs have to scroll through numerous pages looking for relevant information, it becomes a time-consuming task that impacts their workflow.
Therefore, having an efficient nursing home management software with a built-in Kardex tool that shows relevant information like DNRs and ADLs is particularly useful, especially if it is visible on a single screen.
- A user-friendly, streamlined workflow
Another benefit of using a nursing home EMR for point of care documentation is its user-friendliness. Facility staff often have busy schedules therefore it is imperative that the nursing home charting software is easy to operate. Like with all new nursing software programs, facilities will also need to factor in staff training to get the most of the features.
Of course, as the long term care industry is more people-centric and hands-on, there is a high chance that facility staff are not very tech-savvy. Therefore, it is essential the assisted living management software is easy-to-understand, so staff can transition smoothly from using the paper form to the electronic form.
Integrating POC for CNAs or Point of Care CNA Systems
Good long term care providers should strive to improve their documentation through POC for CNAs. CNAs being on the frontline play a critical role in caring for residents, and ensuring the facility is running smoothly. This means they must adhere to federal laws and regulations that impact their documentation process and policies, consequently influencing how they utilize their assisted living software.
Having an efficient POC system in place gives CNAs some comfort in knowing there are accurate resident records with updated care plans that allow them to focus more on the residents’ needs rather than worrying about the accuracy of the data.
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