Ep. 11 - What Inspired Us to Create More Courses with Dava Snyder

Ep. 11 – What Inspired Us to Create More Courses with Dava Snyder

June 25, 2025

About This Episode

How do medication aide certified team members support senior living operators? Host Doug Bryant with Dava Snyder, Regional Director at The Courtyards Senior Living, sits down to discuss how the Medication Aide course has created better career opportunities for team members and led to more personalized care for residents.

Transcription

Intro
You’re listening to Certify It the podcast for advancing your career in care. Powered by the Mason Center for Healthcare Education. Hear news updates and discussions from thought leaders in health care around advancing your career through continuing education.

Doug 00:16
Welcome to Certify It, the podcast for advancing your career in care. I am Doug Bryant, and with me today is Miss Dava Snyder, the regional director of the Courtyard Senior Living. Welcome.

Dava 00:29
Thank you.

Doug 00:30
Dava is one of was one of our very first healthcare partners. And before we were getting rolling today, I was just explaining to our production team that you are one of the main reasons that we continued on this journey to get our Medication aide training up and running.

Dava 00:48
I had no idea. That makes me so happy. That was such a great program.

Doug 00:51
Well, thank you so much. And you all have sent, how many students have we had?

Dava 00:56
We have now sent four students through your program.

Doug 00:59
Okay. And we appreciate that very much. So, for our listening audience and for those that are watching, tell us a little bit about your role at the Courtyard Senior Living and what you all do there.

Dava 01:12
So I work at the Courtyard Senior Living. We’re a small assisted living company. We serve elders in Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and Johnson City, and we believe in the concept that smaller buildings are better for the elders that we serve. So it’s very family-oriented and very much a home, not home like you hear in senior living at this time. It is very much a home for the elders that we serve.

Doug 01:36
Okay. So, how did you come about needing Medication Aides? What was it that drew you to what we were doing and what we were trying to get accomplished?

Dava 01:46
In the world of healthcare today, there are definitely staffing challenges. There’s just an increasing aging population, and there’s really a shortage of employees and workers to take care of the elders that we serve. So we want to make sure that we provide wonderful care and that advancement opportunities that our aides have in becoming Medication aides were just a great transition for our caregivers and our CNAs to advance and deliver medications, and learn opportunities, and more advancement opportunities for our caregivers.

Doug 02:26
So one of the concepts that you said the Courtyards really embraces is that smaller atmosphere. And I would assume that that lends itself to way more person-centered care.

Dava 02:37
Absolutely.

Doug 02:38
And Medication Aides really help with that.

Dava 02:40
We see there that the opportunity for our aides who have a very, very personal relationship with the elders that we serve become a medication aide is just another service that they’re able to provide and interact with. The elders are comfortable with them because often times they’ve helped them in their day-to-day living, in their activities of daily living. So, just the advancement opportunity for aide to learn a new skill set and then to deliver and have interaction and meaningful relationships with the elders. It’s a win-win for us.

Doug 03:16
And that was one thing that we saw in the skilled environment, was what made perfect sense to us was taking these certified nursing assistants that already were involved with our residents, sometimes in very intimate settings, personal cleaning. And they love on them. They actually get to spend more time with them than our nurses do. And it made perfect sense that they would be the ones passing medications.

They really, regulation-wise, can’t truly do assessments, but the personal assessments that they do of, “Hey, I think Miss Smith is in pain right now because she’s acting completely differently than she would normally act.” And having that interaction with the nurse and then being able to carry through and do something else for them to help with that was something that we got very excited about. And we’ve seen even in our own centers that the resident caregiver relationship is just so much, there’s a bond there that we didn’t see with our nurses when they had a thousand different things that they had to do, and Med Pass was just one of them.

So did you all see with your nursing staff that they were able to do more things once you implemented Medication Aides, that your nurses were able to spend more time doing the nursing part of it?

Dava 04:33
There’s so much documentation and, like you said, assessments in the world of nurses. And we typically use licensed practical nurses to take some of the medication pass responsibilities away from them. Absolutely. Made them have more time and opportunity to do some of the things that I think otherwise, they feel challenged. It takes a lot of responsibility off of them.

Doug 04:59
That’s exactly what we’ve seen. And our nurses are happier, because they’re able to do the things that they wanted to do, and they’re not tied to the med cart all day. And again, that sense of the CNA getting that extra bit of responsibility gives them really a career ladder.

Dava 05:18
It’s a career ladder and opportunity for advancement, and also just personal satisfaction. You know, those who are motivated and maybe didn’t have the opportunity yet in life to go to LPN school. They are motivated to do this. And it’s such a stepping stone, like you said, a career ladder for them.

Doug 05:37
And we’ve even seen with some of our aides that just physically can’t do the aide job anymore because it’s so physically taxing that they’re able to extend their careers in caregiving by becoming medication aides, because being a medication aide is less physically demanding.

Dava 05:54
It absolutely is.

Doug 05:55
When you were looking for a partner for your Medication Aide, what drew you to the Mason Center?

Dava 06:00
I have worked with a number of members of your team, and I’ve found the organization and the team members to always be a just a high caliber. They represent themselves well, and always do what you say you’re going to do. Follow through. If you make that commitment, just like you said earlier, it’s a done deal.

We’re not going to go back on our word. So I consider Mason Center and all of the team members that I’ve met so far to be just good people that are in the healthcare industry working for the same cause that we have, just the betterment of individuals and the betterment of care for our elders. So I felt like Mason Center was a perfect partnership for us.

Doug 06:46
Well, and we have found the same thing with the team members that you’ve sent to us. It’s good people are good people, but it’s hard to find sometimes. And the people that you all have sent us have just been top notch. We’re hoping to have Molly, I think one of the students that you all had sent through the program, on a podcast upcoming so that we can talk about her story. But do you have any stories from the students that have come through, or any of their reactions that they’ve shared with you?

Dava 07:13
If we were to talk about Molly, Molly was a caregiver, a CNA on the floor. Molly has, with her new skillset of being a Medication Aide, she has advanced into a leadership position in our organization. She’s actually called a Resident Care Coordinator. And she takes a major role in ensuring the well-being of our residents, making sure that the caregivers and nurses are trained on the things that they need to do to be responsible and provide good care to our elders.

So I saw that as a stepping stone, and she is always eager to step in and help wherever she’s needed. So that type of personality, the kind of people that we want to grow and encourage, and people that are willing to give of themselves to help make sure that the elders are cared for.

Doug 08:03
So Molly sounds phenomenal. I know meeting her was. She’s one of Brandi’s favorite people who have ever come through here. Every time we bring up who could we put on the podcast? It’s always. We need to see if Molly will come. And so far, we’ve not been able to book her, but we’re hoping to on the next podcast.

So, you know, Molly is a great example of how you grew someone who was already, as you said, a great person. What would you tell other senior care leaders in East Tennessee? Are the benefits of growing their staff?

Dava 08:36
I would tell other leaders to invest in your people. It has definitely paid off in our environment. And, you know, we serve elders throughout East Tennessee. Some of our communities are more staffing challenged than others. And we have seen the rewards multiple-fold in how having a Medication Aide on our team has supported us in so many areas.
So I would definitely say invest in your people. And we found that the Mason Center was a great place to invest in our people to use the organization and the resources that you have here is just a great opportunity for other leaders to consider.

Doug 09:18
Thank you so much for that endorsement. And we are very excited to serve the East Tennessee area in senior care. And a partnership with the Mason Center really gives that opportunity to be able to provide that growth

Mid-Roll
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Doug 09:52
I know some of our other partners were excited that we would bear the burden of pass rates when it comes to Medication Aide, the program development. Can you tell a little bit about that? I know that whenever we enter a partnership, there are policies that have to be done because you’re now using certified Medication Aides, and there’s a binder, I believe that Brandi shares with you all how helpful it was to have all of that already in one kit?

Dava 10:21
It’s amazing. So to get started, everything you need is right there. I mean, as the regulations. Sample policies. What the aides can and cannot do. That’s important for writing our company policy. So there was so much information that we could read the information and understand our next steps. It wasn’t that we had to go buy that manual, because your team was always there to support us. If we had questions and, and I would say made it a very easy process.

Doug 10:49
Well, I’m glad to hear that. We’re so excited for our partnership that we have with you. And again, you did not even realize the part that you played in the Mason Center getting their certification for that program, because, again, we felt like we had already made a commitment to nobody else to you all. And we really value that partnership. So thank you so much. Thank you for coming today and spending time with me and sharing a little bit about how, together, we’ve been able to hopefully impact senior care here in Knox County and even in surrounding counties. And we just really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Dava 11:26
Thanks Doug

Outro
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