a project of the UNC Institute on Aging
Increasing the job satisfaction, job quality, job retention, and skill levels of nursing assistants.
Nurse aides provide 80-90% of direct care to North Carolina’s nursing home residents, but have a 117% yearly turnover rate. Turnover interrupts caregiver-resident relationships, increases staffing shortages and costs, and — most importantly—endangers quality of care to our state’s nursing home residents.
WIN A STEP UP educates and supports career nurses aides and frontline supervisors and charge personnel working in nursing homes throughout the state of North Carolina.
WIN A STEP UP stands for Workforce Improvement for Nursing Assistants: Supporting Training, Education, and Payment for Upgrading Performance.
The WIN A STEP UP program was created through a partnership with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the UNC Institute on Aging. WIN A STEP UP is aimed at examining and improving the situation of nursing assistants in the long-term care industry in North Carolina.
In the pilot phase, the primary objective was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the current situation of nursing assistants and to develop educational and incentive programs to improve job quality and reduce turnover in various sectors of the long term care workforce, including nursing homes, adult care homes, home health, home care and hospice settings.
With the closure of a successful pilot program, we have begun the second phase of the WIN A STEP UP program, in which we hope to improve job quality and increase the retention of nursing assistants through the implementation of an educational and reward system in nursing home settings. Our second phase only includes nursing homes, but many of the lessons learned here may be applied to other long term care settings.
Check out the WIN A STEP UP discussion topic on the PHI Quality Care Through Quality Jobs Blog
WIN A STEP UP is a partnership of the NC Division of Health Service Regulation and the UNC Institute on Aging.
© 2009 UNC Institute on Aging

