Page 156 - Vibrant Living Scrapbook

156
Caring in the Household Model is “More Loving”
Carol, a household coordinator at Perham Memorial, shared that she was really skeptical at first of the Household Model. She had done CNA work for thirty-some years and was “done with that.” She had moved into working in the activity department, loved it and thought that is where she would work the rest of her career. She also planned to be nobody’s boss. Now, however, three years into it as a leader, a household coordinator, she says she loves it.
Because she is a CNA she’s glad she can
help a householder who needs it. She said she
feels different about it now, “it’s more loving... you know them as a person, not a task.” She explained embarrassedly, “we used to have ‘potty time’ at 9:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. whether a resident needed it or not. We used to line residents up in the hallway and use the soiled utility room because it was easier for us. Then we sat up on the countertop talking about what we did last night while a resident sat on the toilet. And we thought nothing of it. We didn’t know any better, but now, thank God we do.”
At a staff in-service at Perham Memorial
that Carmen was facilitating, one staff member said, “Carol, tell them what you did yesterday.” Carol looked startled almost as if we woke her up and she didn’t at all know what we were talking about or what her colleague was referring to. Her colleague was referring to a cocktail hour Carol had held the afternoon before. She explained that the planned snack that afternoon was pudding and she simply thought to herself, “That’s not enough” and set out crackers and cheese, and beer and wine creating more of a cocktail hour. Later, Carol told me that she couldn’t think of what they meant because she now does this every day. Creating something special every afternoon has become the norm, not something out of the ordinary.
Carol’s leadership has also shown itself in her attempt to reach out to the “old” CNA staff that she was now supervising within their household. She said she would purposefully do kind things
for them and help answer resident calls but to no avail. Interestingly, the administrator of this home shared later that two of these “old” staff members were recently “let go” as they admitted they just could not relinquish the old institutional means
of control and rigid scheduling.