Certainly. When we look at Lynn Valley and what happened there, for want of a better term I call it clinical leadership. Strong clinical leadership is needed, particularly now in this environment.
Community care aides are 70% of the care staff in our nursing homes in this country: personal support workers, as you call them in the east, and care aides, as we call them out west. Understanding infection control, understanding how PPE works, understanding the use of N95 masks and aerosolizing procedures was, I think, a piece that was missing.
It weaves through this issue around the care aides in our care homes. This is a place where the federal government could show leadership. I'm struck by the fact that we have national standards—not just standards, but exams—for RNs and LPNs, but we don't have any such national standard for care aides. Part of the way that you make a person feel valued, and part of the way that you attract people to something called a profession, is that you actually provide those standards.
In the 20 years that I worked predominantly with care aides—I worked with nurses and LPNs as well—they craved training. They wanted to be able to take courses. Our system is set up.... It's very frustrating. I could send my nurses on courses and I didn't have to backfill them. It was easy. If I sent my care aides on courses, I had to backfill them. That cost money, so they sort of got left behind in all of it.
I think that is an area: federal leadership around standards, not just around what happens in care homes and care ratios, but around the level of training. I am a big proponent of standardized exams. They have to be practical and written, I do understand that, and they don't tell the whole story. They do not get to the piece around the EQ—emotional quotient—that is needed to be able to provide this kind of care.
Jodi is quite right. The wrong person with the right training is as much a recipe for disaster, in fact I would say more so, than the right person with the wrong training. We have to be careful about that.
Certainly PPE is one example where, if we had better training, more high-level training, more standardized training, we could have.... A lot of concern and anxiety have been created around this. I think when we step back and look at it, we're going to realize that yes, that was important, but really there was this other piece over here. I think that is a key area where the federal government could show leadership as well.