Often when I am speaking to prospective clients over the phone or during a home visit, they will ask about our caregivers. This is a very important question to ask of any home care company. Caregivers provide the direct hands-on care and attention that improves quality of life and health outcomes for people.
There are many things that set SYNERGY HomeCare apart from our competitors in Tucson and one of them is the lengths that we go through to screen, hire, and develop our caregivers. We encourage you to compare SYNERGY HomeCare to any home care company, or even every other home care company, in Tucson, AZ. You will find that we are unique.
Screening Caregiver Candidates
The number one thing we look for in a caregiver is a heart for caring for others. You can train skills such as safe transfer techniques, but you cannot teach someone to care for other people. You are either wired to help and care for other people or you are not. We do not hire people who are just looking for a paycheck. We hire caregivers who are genuinely interested in helping other people.
We seek caregivers that have previous experience caring for others in a hospital, skilled nursing facility, senior community or in a home setting. While most of our caregivers have been working professionally for many years, some of our best caregivers are more mature people who have helped loved ones and come to us because they found it very rewarding after being in careers that are less fulfilling.
We run criminal background checks on all of our candidates – Federal, National, and local. If a caregiver candidate has lived in another state, we pull that history as well. Some of our competitors conduct searches only in free local databases. These sources do not include all criminal history and do not include history outside of Arizona.
Hiring Caregivers
Our Human Resources staff do the initial screening of caregiver candidates, but no single person makes the hiring decision. It starts with the initial interview, but continues throughout the onboarding process, including new employee orientation and training. If any SYNERGY HomeCare staff member has serious reservations about a potential new hire, we will not continue the hiring and onboarding process.
We perform drug testing on site. We do not hire anyone with an illegal drug in his or her system. And we do not allow candidates to return later if they fail the drug test the first time.
We hire only individuals who are authorized to work in the United States. We use E-Verify through the US Department of Homeland Security to confirm that each caregiver is authorized to work in this country.
Developing Caregivers
We provide training to all caregiver new hires. We provide hands-on training in our office that includes transfer skills, personal care for bedbound clients, blood pressure monitoring, safety supervision for using walkers, memory care, hospice care, etc. We have the necessary health equipment in our office to support this training. In addition, we provide twenty-five hours of online training on a wide variety of topics including infection control, dementia care, Parkinson’s Disease, stroke care, etc.
In addition to training during the initial onboarding of new hires, we provide ongoing training for our caregiver staff. We provide more in-depth training on specialized topics like Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.). We hold regular in-services in our office and invite outside experts to educate our staff on these topics (e.g. hospice, memory care, diabetes, etc.).
Each client has a unique care plan. Our Care Coordinator monitors care notes on a daily basis. We make quality calls to clients and caregivers. We use this information to coach caregivers, monitor quality, and ensure that the client-caregiver relationship is as productive and beneficial as possible.
We go through great lengths to ensure that you or your loved one receive quality, nurturing care. In addition, you can call our office 24/7 with any concern or issue and talk to a staff member, including me, the owner of SYNERGY HomeCare of Tucson.
