Golden Pond - Reflection
I have worked at golden pond rest home for 2 summers now. It has been a challenging, but rewarding, enlightening, and educational job. Some of the things that I learnt along this journey are obvious but important and others are far more hidden. I hope that in working in what can be considered one of the lowest hierarchy of health care, that I can remain humble when I graduate and automatically move up the hierarchy.
One observation that I made which is ironically commonly stated in the community is that 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. While many of the residents had CVA or dementia there were some that were simply in there as a result of being 'old'. But these particular residents would come into the rest home …show more content…
It was the balance they placed on cost vs benefit, except it was more thought about as profit vs resident benefit. For example, each resident got only 3 pads allocated a day (if they required them), unless the family or resident themselves paid for them. So it was one for the morning, one for the afternoon and one for overnight. This might work ok, if residents were still mostly continent, but few were. So if I checked a pad and it was full or soiled then my only options last summer were to put on the next shifts pad, and leave them with nothing, or to leave it (which I never did), or to 'borrow' a pad from another resident that was deemed unlikely to need it. This got slightly better in the last summer I was there where another option was added; go and find a nurse, who could unlock a room that had 10 spare small pads which were meant to cover 60 residents. I feel like the management of the rest home has looked at cost vs benefit the wrong way here. Some residents simply need more pads than others; some are 'heavy wetters', others regularly have 2 bowel motions per day. I strongly believe that their personal hygiene is more important than improving the profit made by the rest home.
I feel as though this reflection has been largely negative but in reality there was a lot of good from my time there this summer. I learnt medical terms from the nurses, I saw majority of the carers truly caring about the residents and their families, I saw residents looked after with immense respect, and I saw residents enjoying their days at the rest home. I hope that with all my experiences that I gained, that I can use these to become a better and more caring doctor in the future. I will continue to have huge respect for residents/patients, nurses and most of all
I have worked at golden pond rest home for 2 summers now. It has been a challenging, but rewarding, enlightening, and educational job. Some of the things that I learnt along this journey are obvious but important and others are far more hidden. I hope that in working in what can be considered one of the lowest hierarchy of health care, that I can remain humble when I graduate and automatically move up the hierarchy.
One observation that I made which is ironically commonly stated in the community is that 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. While many of the residents had CVA or dementia there were some that were simply in there as a result of being 'old'. But these particular residents would come into the rest home …show more content…
It was the balance they placed on cost vs benefit, except it was more thought about as profit vs resident benefit. For example, each resident got only 3 pads allocated a day (if they required them), unless the family or resident themselves paid for them. So it was one for the morning, one for the afternoon and one for overnight. This might work ok, if residents were still mostly continent, but few were. So if I checked a pad and it was full or soiled then my only options last summer were to put on the next shifts pad, and leave them with nothing, or to leave it (which I never did), or to 'borrow' a pad from another resident that was deemed unlikely to need it. This got slightly better in the last summer I was there where another option was added; go and find a nurse, who could unlock a room that had 10 spare small pads which were meant to cover 60 residents. I feel like the management of the rest home has looked at cost vs benefit the wrong way here. Some residents simply need more pads than others; some are 'heavy wetters', others regularly have 2 bowel motions per day. I strongly believe that their personal hygiene is more important than improving the profit made by the rest home.
I feel as though this reflection has been largely negative but in reality there was a lot of good from my time there this summer. I learnt medical terms from the nurses, I saw majority of the carers truly caring about the residents and their families, I saw residents looked after with immense respect, and I saw residents enjoying their days at the rest home. I hope that with all my experiences that I gained, that I can use these to become a better and more caring doctor in the future. I will continue to have huge respect for residents/patients, nurses and most of all