From WDEL: “Delaware’s healthcare system is about to receive a lot of extra help dealing with skyrocketing COVID-19 cases across the state, and the resultant straining infrastructure.
“I never, ever thought once in my lifetime that I was going to be a certified nursing assistant,” said Delaware National Guard (DNG) First Lt. Antwan Miller.
Miller is one of about a hundred guardsmen and women who cracked open a textbook just this week to train for and ultimately fill healthcare positions around the state with the intent of easing pressure on the system before it buckles under all the patients filling up hospital beds amid a winter surge and new, more transmissible Omicron strain.”
The House just passed a bill yestereday that will help expediete the training of the National Guard to help out during this Omicron surge of the Pandemic. House Bill 280 facilitates the rapid certification of National Guard members as certified nursing assistants (CNAs) by allowing the Department of Health and Social Services to establish the total required classroom and clinical training and mandatory facility-specific orientation hours. In other words, it gives the Department discretion to dramatically shorten those credit hours so that they can serve certified nursing assistants so that they are taught the basics and quickly.
Modeled after a Minnesota initiative, eligible guard members will participate in rapid certification programs through DelTech and be deployed to provide temporary staffing in long term care facilities experiencing staffing shortages.
National Guard members have served as a critical part of the state’s response efforts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Training and deploying National Guard soldiers to work as CNAs will help relieve staffing shortages in health care settings and facilitate the transfer of patients out of Delaware’s hospitals to free up in-patient bed space.
| House Bill 100 Sponsors | Yes Votes | No Votes |
| Bentz, Longhurst, Carson, Minor-Brown, Schwartzkopf, Baumbach, Brady, Griffith, Heffernan, K.Johnson, Lambert, Morrison, Osienski, D.Short, Briggs King, Gray, M.Smith | Houses Passed 41-0. Baumbach Bennett Bentz Bolden Brady Bush Carson Chukwuocha Cooke Dorsey-Walker Griffith Heffernan K.Johnson K.Williams Kowalko Lambert Longhurst Lynn Matthews Minor-Brown Mitchell Morrison Osienski S.Moore Schwartzkopf Wilson-Anton Briggs King Collins D.Short Dukes Gray Hensley M.Smith Morris Postles Ramone Shupe Smyk Spiegelman Vanderwende Yearick | |
| Sokola, S. McBride, Townsend, Ennis, Gay, Hansen, Mantazavinos, Paradee, Hocker, Pettyjohn | ||
| Current Status: | Sent to the Senate |
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