Evaluation of the impact of The Little Things training on personal care assistants' confidence to communicate with residents in aged care.

Abstract

To evaluate The Little Things training program, designed to assist personal care assistants (PCAs) from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to communicate more effectively with aged care residents. This project included PCAs from residential aged care facilities (RACFs) and Certificate III students from registered training organisations (RTOs) in Melbourne, Australia. A control group (n=18) was also included. Measures included the following: pre- and posttraining confidence to communicate and rankings of task importance; posttraining perceived change in confidence; and posttraining impacts on practice. Altogether, 75 PCAs and 30 RTO students participated in Intake I of the training and 31 PCAs and 34 RTO students in Intake 2. Confidence increased in The Little Things participants relative to those in the control group (β=0.11, T=1.99, p=0.05). Change did not vary by Intake or whether someone was in the RACF or RTO group, F (2, 147)=0.58, p=0.5; nor by sociodemographic characteristics. Most training participants (84%) thought their ability to communicate with older people would 'improve a lot' as a result of the training. Training participants also ranked the importance of duties such as 'Speaking in a friendly and informal way to older people' more highly after than before the training (p=0.01), while little change was observed in the control group. The Little Things program increased training participants' confidence to communicate and shifted perceived priorities towards interacting with residents in a way that enhanced resident well-being.