What it's really like to work in a long-term care facility
It’s a tough, important and rewarding gig. Learn the day-to-day.
There comes a point in time when sons, daughters and grandchildren just can’t take care of their parents, grandparents or other elderly loved ones any longer. It’s sad, but a fact of life, and it has everything to do with a lack of proper skills.
This is where the long-term care facility—with its highly trained medical and support staffs—comes in.
Long-term care facilities are places people with chronic disease or other debilitations live so they can receive round-the-clock care. Need for workers in these facilities is expanding because we’re living much longer as a society, according to a report by the University of California Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care.
Working in this type of facility can be difficult—both physically and emotionally—but, similar to working in a NICU, workers form bonds with their patients and patients’ families. Read on to learn the realities of working in a long-term care facility.
Your days will be unpredictable
As a caregiver at Georgetown Living, an assisted living facility in Georgetown, Texas, Carla Hurta helps patients groom, get ready for the day and do stimulating activities. The facility only cares for patients with dementia, so things can turn on a dime at any moment. Her days—like those of most people who work in long-term care—basically depend on any given patient’s needs.
Certain patients struggle physically, others struggle cognitively. Many struggle with both, and patient depression is a major factor as well. Caregivers have to be up to any challenge.
“Working with people with dementia calls for flexibility, as residents can be in highly variable moods at any given time, and it can take a lot of patience,” Hurta says. “Each day is very different.”
You’ll work odd (but good) hours
Long-term care facilities require 24-hour staffing, which means your shift may change to accommodate patients’ needs and other employees’ time off. But this can also be a good thing.
Far from a typical 9-to-5-style workplace, the long-term care facility relies on a steady stream of employees who are able to work odd hours and odd days. Hurta says she usually works a morning shift, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., five days a week, with Friday and Saturday off.
But, ultimately, you can sometimes decide. For example, Jane Lowrance, senior assistant director at Georgetown, says she works 8- to-10 hour days Sundays through Thursdays. Full-time work; you set the schedule. Not bad.
You’ll build close relationships
The intimate nature of long-term care means you’ll likely build strong relationships with the residents, their families and the caregivers.
Hurta says she enjoys hearing the stories they share and learning about their lives. Residents can become “like family” and her work is as much building relationships with them as it is caring for them, she says.
But of course, as with all work that deals with the elderly, that close connection comes with emotional challenges, as well. For example, it can be a tough to get family members on the same page in the face of a degenerative, no-win situation, Lowrance says, and convincing them to hand over control can be hard.
“One challenge is communicating with family members who have not fully grasped the progressive nature of Alzheimer's or other dementias,” Hurta says.
Resident deaths are tough as well. “We become so close to them, especially as they progress; they really rely upon us for everything,” she says. “When they pass away it can be very difficult to deal with.”
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