Dr. Dobbs is a College Professor for the School of Aging Studies at the University South Florida. She has been a member of The Gerontological Society of America since 1997. In 2011 she became a Fellow of The Society. She currently serves as Past Chair of the Interest Group Committee.
Dr. Dobbs has been a member of The Gerontological Society of America since 1997. In 2011 she became a Fellow of The Society. She currently serves as Past Chair of the Interest Group Committee.
What is your Career in Aging?
I am a College Professor for the School of Aging Studies at the University South Florida.
How did you decide to work in the aging field?
I started out in direct care services in the early 1990s as a Medicaid Case Manager for the Elderly in the State of Nebraska and enjoyed working directly with clients to assess their care and financial needs to become eligible for Medicaid so they could stay in their own homes. After a couple of years I moved back to my home state of Kansas and worked in a large 250 bed nursing home as the Social Service Director and then as a Case Manager for a private Home Health company. Through all of the experiences I had with direct care service I recognized a gap in services for those older adults who were either not financially able to pay privately for care or could also not qualify financially for Medicaid. I also encountered many problems with nursing home care. These issues made me want to pursue a career in research related to policies and practices that could be part of the solution to fixing a broken long-term care system. It was at this time in the mid-1990s I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in sociology with a concentration in gerontology at the University of Kansas.
How did your training in gerontology prepare you to work with older adults?
My doctoral training at the University of Kansas and then post-doctoral training at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with Sheps Center for Health Services Research has prepared me well to conduct mixed methods research about the quality of end of life care older adults receive specifically in the area of hospice and palliative care use and education for professionals and paraprofessionals about palliative and hospice care in long term care settings.
Why is the training of the health care workforce to care for older adults so important?
The research I have conducted over the last 20 years about the quality of care in long term care settings indicates that the level of training that the direct care work force received in nursing homes and assisted living is very minimal and this is directly correlated with many problems facing our long-term care workforce such as high turnover, and poor quality of resident care. Staff turnover, especially among certified nursing assistants is viewed by long term care administrative staff as the number one problem. Studies I have conducted have shown that increased levels of training about caring for those who are terminally ill can potentially improve resident care outcomes. Another study I have been involved in is online module training for dementia care and this has shown to improve applicability of skills among direct care workers caring for persons with dementia.
What do you see as the future of the elder care workforce?
To take a positive outlook there are many opportunities for a career in direct care work with elders in long-term care. In my profession as an educator of undergraduate and graduate students in gerontology at USF I see so many students who are compassionate, understanding and motivated to embark on such a career that will be successful because they are well trained and educated. We just had our Careers in Aging networking event this month and many of the providers of long term-care services who attended are previous alums from our program who have gone on to make a difference in nursing homes, the funeral home industry, senior centers and assisted living settings just to name a few. There are definitely challenges though that the elder care workforce is facing with a shortage of such individuals who fit the profile of what it takes to have a successful career in elder care. On the one hand, nationally we are in need of more gerontology programs to train and educate individuals to work in this field. On the other hand universities who offer such programs have to find creative ways to attract the best and the brightest to a gerontology or aging services profession. I know when I started out by my senior year of college someone said to me, “You didn’t start college saying to yourself ‘I want to be a gerontologist’. Identifying students early in their undergraduate programs who are trying to decide what their major will be is crucial.
How did you decide to work in the aging field?
I started out in direct care services in the early 1990s as a Medicaid Case Manager for the Elderly in the State of Nebraska and enjoyed working directly with clients to assess their care and financial needs to become eligible for Medicaid so they could stay in their own homes. After a couple of years, I moved back to my home state of Kansas and worked in a large 250 bed nursing home as the Social Service Director and then as a Case Manager for a private Home Health company. Through all of the experiences I had with direct care service, I recognized a gap in services for older adults who couldn’t afford to pay privately for care and could not qualify financially for Medicaid. I also encountered many problems with nursing home care. These issues made me want to pursue a career in policies and practice research to be part of the solution to fixing a broken long-term care system. It was at this time in the mid-1990s I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in sociology with a concentration in gerontology at the University of Kansas.
How did your training in gerontology prepare you to work with older adults?
My doctoral training at the University of Kansas and then post-doctoral training at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with Sheps Center for Health Services Research has prepared me well to conduct mixed methods research about the quality of end of life care older adults receive specifically in the area of hospice and palliative care use and education for professionals and paraprofessionals about palliative and hospice care in long term care settings.
Why is the training of the health care workforce to care for older adults so important?
The research I have conducted over the last 20 years about the quality of care in long term care settings indicates that the level of training that the direct care work force received in nursing homes and assisted living is very minimal and this is directly correlated with many problems facing our long-term care workforce such as high turnover, and poor quality of resident care. Staff turnover, especially among certified nursing assistants is viewed by long term care administrative staff as the number one problem. Studies I have conducted have shown that increased levels of training about caring for those who are terminally ill can potentially improve resident care outcomes. Another study I have been involved in is online module training for dementia care and this has shown to improve applicability of skills among direct care workers caring for persons with dementia.
What do you see as the future of the elder care workforce?
To take a positive outlook there are many opportunities for a career in direct care work with elders in long-term care. In my profession as an educator of undergraduate and graduate students in gerontology at USF I see so many students who are compassionate, understanding and motivated to embark on such a career that will be successful because they are well trained and educated. We just had our Careers in Aging networking event this month and many of the providers of long term-care services who attended are previous alums from our program who have gone on to make a difference in nursing homes, the funeral home industry, senior centers and assisted living settings just to name a few. There are definitely challenges though that the elder care workforce is facing with a shortage of such individuals who fit the profile of what it takes to have a successful career in elder care. On the one hand, nationally we are in need of more gerontology programs to train and educate individuals to work in this field. On the other hand universities who offer such programs have to find creative ways to attract the best and the brightest to a gerontology or aging services profession. I know when I started out by my senior year of college someone said to me, “You didn’t start college saying to yourself ‘I want to be a gerontologist’. Identifying students early in their undergraduate programs who are trying to decide what their major will be is crucial.