For weeks, Tammy Schooley watched as health care providers ignored her father as he lay in a hospital bed suffering from cancer.

If she told them he needed a bed pan, for instance, Schooley said they told her to let him go in the bed. If he needed help during the night, I couldnt get anybody to come in and help me.

There was just such a lack of care and concern, and thats putting it nicely, Schooley said recently. Her father, a semiretired physicist, died at age 82 in August 2011.

What her dad went through, along with how her mother was treated when hospitalized with Alzheimers years earlier, motivated Schooley to train to be a certified nurse assistant.

In many ways, her story underscores the need for more qualified health care workers, a shortage that has been deepening in the past few years as the nations baby boomers age into retirement by the millions and fall in need of care.

I told myself as soon as I could find a program, I was going into the health care field, she said. I had to try and make a difference.

According to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, by 2020 the nation will need 1.1 million additional direct care workers a category that includes certified nurse assistants.

With the increasing need in the health care field, the American Red Cross recently launched a second round of classes to train certified nurse assistants to provide basic care such as feeding, dressing, bathing and monitoring to patients.

It was exactly what Schooley, 51, of Conyers had hoped for, and when she happened upon the program in July, she signed up immediately.

Schooley would bring with her the compassion she believed her parents deserved, and the CNA instructors would teach her how to properly provide the care they needed.

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Red Cross launches new round of nurse assistant classes