News and Information from CEUSite.com
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In this Issue:

New Course:"Challenges of Adapting to Long-Term Care"by Gisela Koufus, CE Provider - 5 credit hours
New Course:"Mental Health Problems and the Aged"by Gisela Koufus, CE Provider - 6 credit hours
Upcoming CEU Renewals
HR Forum: Employment law "horror stories" suggest need for policy manuals
HR Forum: Overtime Regulations Redefined: What They Mean for Employers

10/31 Michigan
11/30 Illinois ( odd years )
12/31 Alaska ( even years )
12/31 Georgia ( odd years )
12/31 Iowa ( odd years )
12/31 Montana
12/31 Nebraska ( even years )
12/31 New Hampshire
12/31 New York ( odd years )
12/31 North Dakota
12/31 Oklahoma
12/31 South Dakota ( even years )
12/31 Wyoming

01/01 Connecticut ( even years )
03/31 New Mexico
03/31 Virginia
04/01 Vermont ( even years )
04/30 New Jersey ( odd years )
05/31 Utah

We are continuously developing new programs and will let you know as soon as they are available. Our list of current programs can be found by browsing to http://www.ceusite.com/courses.

Interested in providing courses? Please visit http://www.ceusite.com/authors.

New Course: Arthritis and Older Adults

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New Course:

"Challenges of Adapting to Long-Term Care"by Gisela Koufus, CE Provider
5 credit hours

This program explores the challenges aged adults face in adapting to chronic illness and long-term care. The history of nursing homes is explored and how admission to a long-term care facility may affect older adults is discussed. Psychological adaptation to long-term care, psychological challenges of aging, psychological challenges of chronic illness, and strategies for adapting to long-term care are explored. A brief discussion of models of adaptation and interventions, effects of relocation and transition to the long-term-care nursing facilities, the process of adjusting to a nursing home and ways for creating a therapeutic social and physical nursing home environment is included. OBRA '87 regulations are reviewed as they relate to quality of care, and some special resident care issues are discussed.

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New Course:

"Mental Health Problems and the Aged"by Gisela Koufus, CE Provider
6 credit hours

Caring for specific mental health problems and needs of older adults is a great challenge for all healthcare providers. It is a fact that the large majority of older people who have mental health problems are not being identified, evaluated, or treated. This is especially true for those older persons who are residing in long-term care facilities, and those who are isolated in their homes in the community. Too often, confusion, disorientation, depression, paranoid behavior, and other mental and emotional problems of older people have been blamed on "just getting old," both by the older people themselves and by health care professionals. Therefore, many older people have not been diagnosed and treated for their mental health problems, thus decreasing the quality and sometimes the length of their lives. This program focuses on a variety of mental health problems of older adults in their own homes and in nursing homes. The need for a total assessment - physical, functional, social, emotional, environmental, and mental - is stressed, and specific practical nursing interventions to use when caring for clients or residents with behavioral and mental problems are discussed.

The purpose of this program is to help nurses and others who care for and about the aged become more aware of the special mental health problems experienced by older adults, and to assist them with the identification of problems and appropriate care.

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You can obtain CEUs instantly, online, and at your convenience; without incurring additional expenses such as travel, lodging and meals, saving hundreds of dollars every year.

HR Forum:

Employment law "horror stories" suggest need for policy manuals

An employee is dismissed for stealing money from co-workers and bringing a loaded gun to work. A federal court rules that he can sue for failure to accommodate his "chemical imbalance." The EEOC states that firing employees for lying on their job applications has an adverse impact on ex-cons because they, more than others, feel a need to hide gaps in their work record.

You probably know at least one person who you think was treated callously or unfairly at work. The experience can be traumatic, but the employee desperately needs the job. So why not pass laws requiring employers to be fair? Employers must conduct job interviews with kid gloves and feel increasingly restricted from being able to check references or to fire incompetent employees without subjecting themselves to adverse legal consequences. There are numerous examples of employment law interpreted to the extreme, including an appeal and arbitration process that allowed a New York City bus driver to accumulate 103 at-fault collisions and still keep driving. Or a teacher charged with sexual misconduct who, by threatening to sue, got his employer to pay him $50,000, seal his files and provide neutral job references. However, there are very few cases that couldn't have been avoided by having a well-written personnel policy manual and training supervisors and managers to consistently apply those policies. Even if you have gone for years without being sued you should make time to develop clear company policies. Sometimes it takes a scare to get people to change. We suggest working with your HR representative to:

Write a good personnel policy manual to assure that all employees know the rules and the consequences for violating those rules.
Have the personnel policy manual reviewed by a your Human Resource Provider to assure that it complies with employment laws and does not risk being deemed an "employment contract."
Train all supervisors and managers on the importance of following the company's policy manual.
Have someone be responsible for overseeing all discipline and discharge actions to assure consistency of treatment between employees.

For additional information please contact:

@ www.gnsadmin.com

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Overtime Regulations Redefined: What They Mean for Employers

The U.S. Department of Labor has issued the new and final regulations to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Now you have to bring your company in compliance with the new law. This means that employers across the country must quickly review employees' overtime status to determine whether they fall within the exempt or nonexempt categories of the FLSA's new regulations.

The final overtime regulations issued by the Department of Labor make a number of changes to the way in which employers will apply the FLSA test and determine employee's exempt or nonexempt status. The following major changes were made to the FLSA:

The salary threshold has been increased to $455 per week ($23,660 annually). This means that any employee earning less than this amount automatically qualifies for overtime pay.
Highly compensated employees who earn $100,000 per year or more and who customarily and regularly perform any one or more of the exempt duties or responsibilities of an executive, administrative, or professional employee are exempt from the overtime requirements. These employees must receive at least $455 per week on a salary basis to qualify under this exemption.
Blue collar workers. The so-called "white collar" exemptions do not apply to manual laborers or other "blue collar" workers who perform work involving repetitive operations with their hands, physical skill, and energy. FLSA-covered, non management employees in production, maintenance, construction, and similar occupations are entitled to minimum wage and overtime premium pay under the FLSA, and are not exempt no matter how highly paid they might be.
Police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and other so-called "first responders" such as detectives, deputy sheriffs, and state troopers, are not exempt employees and are entitled to overtime pay.
Executives are no longer required to "regularly exercise discretionary powers" in order to qualify as exempt (as they were required to do by the old "long test"). There no longer is a special exemption for "sole charge" executives.
Time devoted to nonexempt work. There no longer is a requirement that executive, administrative, professional, and computer employees devote no more than 20 percent of their time to nonexempt work in order to qualify as exempt, as was required by the old "long test."
Learned professionals. For the learned professional exemption the phrase "work requiring advanced knowledge" is defined as work that is predominantly intellectual in character, and that includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment.
Business owners who own at least 20 percent equity interest in their company must be actively engaged in the management of the company to qualify as exempt.
Business owners and "particular weight." Business owners must still have the authority to hire or fire other employees or their suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, or any other change of status of other employees must be given "particular weight," as in the old rules. In the new rules, though, "particular weight" is defined by a set of factors to consider including whether it is part of the employee's job duties to make such suggestions and recommendations are made or requested; and the frequency with which the employee's suggestions and recommendations are relied upon by others.

The new rules took effect August 23, 2004. It will be published in the Federal Register and a text version is available online at www.dol.gov/fairpay.

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