The challenges of care workers and how to overcome them

Being a carer is an incredibly rewarding job – and now there is a growing need for more people to join this profession.

As the amount of elderly people in need of care increases, the importance of care workers rises alongside it. To put this into perspective, there are approximately 1.67 million people working within social care currently. If the workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people over the age of 65, then the number of care workers will increase to around 2.16 million by 2035.

However, it is widely known that care workers, like all high responsibility roles, face some challenges. In this blog we will discuss these challenges, and address how intuitive software, like Radar Healthcare can help overcome these obstacles.

Work overload

Work overload is one of the major challenges faced by people working within the care sector – and Covid-19 only added to this. Care Management Matters conducted some research, during the pandemic, which revealed that the high increase in hours led to impact workers’ mental health, as well as causing workforce burnout.

Although Covid-19 restrictions have begun to lift in the UK, the repercussions and aftermath of the pandemic are far from gone. 76% of carers have declared that the pandemic will continue to have a long-lasting negative impact on their wellbeing. This strain was heightened as over 40,000 care workers left the sector in 2021.

Nonetheless, work overload and workforce burnout are still very prevalent within the industry today. Care Home Professional states that 37% of carers believe that the care sector and governments should invest in more to better support them in their roles.

Finding a balance between admin and caring

Alongside caring comes a lot of admin duties. Carers can find themselves having to dedicate a lot of their time to paperwork, filing reports, and auditing, on top of handling sensitive data. Poor organisational structures lead to worker frustration, burnout, and can sometimes lead to errors.

These issues can stem from a range of factors including work overload, a lack of supportive technology, poor communication between healthcare professionals, and other inefficiencies. This can all negatively impact the reputation of an organisation, the quality of care provided, and the CQC ratings.

Preparing for CQC inspections

At the end of 2021, the CQC acknowledged the importance to, “recognise the work of everyone in health and social care.” As part of this, they have said that they will begin to inspect any care homes that have been previously rated ‘Requires Improvement’, to “identify where improvement has taken place and to re-rate where possible.” The number of care homes that fall into this category in the UK equates to 3,271, which is about 14%.

However, being prepared for a CQC inspection can be tricky when care organisations are already so busy with their regular duties. That is why it is essential for care professionals to utilise checklists and adopt software to help organise and evidence auditing, records, and other supporting documentation.

How to overcome these challenges with Radar Healthcare?

The life of a care worker can be overwhelming. Wearing many different hats throughout the working day can be difficult to keep up with. Having to commit to long hours can become tiresome. And for several reasons, like regulatory and compliance concerns, the healthcare sector is notoriously slow to adapt to modern ways of working.

At Radar Healthcare we understand all of this.

We know that quality, risk, and compliance can be daunting, time consuming, and complicated. That is why we have designed a system, powered by AI technology, that allows you to organise all the elements you may be struggling with in one place.

Investing in reliable healthcare software reduces the amount of time spent on admin, aligns communication methods between all parties, and helps manage and organise tasks and data, allowing careers more time to spend with patients and residents, doing what they do best – caring!

Many of our partners are already reaping the benefits of our software. To see how easy Radar Healthcare is to use and operate, book a consultation.