Lowering training hours to become CNA is a good step

For years, nursing homes, home healthcare agencies and other facilities have struggled to hire enough nurses and nursing aides.

It's a challenge that will continue to worsen, as Long Island ages, and the region's residents increasingly need greater levels of care.

The Island's healthcare industry faces enormous uncertainty, even as the need for it grows. Existing staffing shortages are going to be exacerbated by the expiration of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian individuals, many of whom work in healthcare.

With those moving pieces, state Health Department officials are right to focus on finding ways to increase the number of people seeking to become certified nurse aides, a position critical for any facility that cares for the elderly and those with illnesses and disabilities.

The state's latest proposal involves reducing the number of clerical and in-classroom training hours required to become a CNA. The Health Department suggests lowering the number of mandated hours from 100 to 75. The federal minimum stands at 75, but 29 states, including New York, required more than that as of 2023.

Reducing initial training hours should ease individuals' introduction into the field, giving prospective CNAs an important incentive to make a career of helping some of the Island's most vulnerable individuals.

CNAs are responsible for aiding elderly residents who need assistance with eating, bathing, dressing, moving and more. Those are critical skills, but if the initial training is handled appropriately, CNAs should be ready in the 75-hour time frame. Yet the process must not stop there. Ongoing professional development and continuing education is key. And facilities and state officials should establish training of their own, along with mentorship programs and other opportunities, so new CNAs can learn from experienced colleagues. 

Nonetheless, there are valid questions. If the proposal, now in a public comment period, goes forward, state officials must evaluate whether training hour reductions actually increase recruitment and retention, and publish relevant data. They also must determine any unintended consequences, such as whether CNAs lack skills or confidence due to the missing hours. 

The training changes must be only one piece of a far larger puzzle. Increasing wages and improving working conditions are crucial. Facility owners and management companies must be responsive, by regularly evaluating their institutions, overcoming shortcomings and fixing violations. Federal and state regulators must hold those owners and managers accountable when they don't. A certified nurse aide's job is extraordinarily difficult under the best of circumstances; owners and regulators can make it better.

With improved oversight and attention to nursing homes, assisted living and other senior care facilities from all levels, with a spotlight on meeting nurses' concerns and needs, and with the right recruitment efforts to attract the special people who will do this work well, CNAs and their patients will benefit. 

At the heart of a CNA's work is their relationships with those for whom they care. That doesn't necessarily take more training hours.