The health care industry is a multifaceted, booming industry that will always need more employees. People will always get sick or need care in some way. Many older adults need a little extra care or simply don’t feel safe living by themselves any longer. These adults move into long-term resident care homes or, as most people call them, nursing homes.
This past summer I worked in the local long-term care home. To even begin work there, I had to become certified to do so in Pennsylvania, which meant that I had to take and thoroughly pass a test proving I was capable of providing assistance to older adults in a Pennsylvanian long-term resident care home. To me the test was mostly commonsense.
Anyway, I passed the test and became certified to do my job.
I hated it.
Long-term resident care is very hard with little reward. While I enjoyed bringing a smile to the residents’ faces, my coworkers (and my bosses in particular) made that job miserable for the most part. It was also rewarding in the good karma kind of sense. I always thought, “Hey, I might need someone to do this for me someday.”
I loved the residents for the most part. There was one woman in particular who was incredibly sweet and always told the best stories about her family. Her parents were first-generation Italian immigrants, and she always had a new story to tell to us.
Of course some residents are more difficult than others. You quickly learn who will give you grief about what and who won’t. There was another woman who simply cannot be pleased. If you make the bed one way, she’d complain about it, and the next day she’d complain you didn’t make it the way you did the day before that.
But mostly, I just didn’t enjoy running myself ragged trying to keep up with eighteen residents with only one other person, which is the PA standard for a home licensed for up to 20 residents. Through that on top of the cleaning, the dishes, the cooking, the laundry, and more, like my mean bosses, and the fact that I don’t want a career in the health-care industry, it made my experience fairly miserable.
The moral of the story? Learning something new is great. Learning something new is even better when you know for a fact that you never want to do that particular something ever again. First time for everything, eh?