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General stress
Feb. 4th, 2021 02:22 pmFor those of you reading this who don't know, around June last year I started working in a care home. I worked in that particular care home for about five months before leaving due to the fact that my hours were being reduced (there wasn't as much need for staff and I was bank), and I just didn't think it was very well run. I moved to Northern Ireland in late November, and was able to get a job the following month in another home. After completing the online training, I was able to start a few days after Christmas.
The difference between where I worked in England and where I worked in Northern Ireland are that the first place was a residential care home, and the place in Northern Ireland was a nursing ward specifically for people with dementia. Residential care homes have no nurses on staff, meaning that if for example a resident has a bedsore and needs their dressing changed, you need to arrange for the district nurse to come do it. Therefore typically, the residents are healthier and have fewer health issues. Where I worked in particular, the residents generally were fairly easy to get on with and if they needed assistance with personal care they would generally let you get on with it and wouldn't get unhappy or violent.
However, the home I worked at in Northern Ireland was quite different. For one thing, we were assigned wards that we would work on throughout the day, and there would be five carers per ward. My ward had about fifteen or sixteen residents living on it, whereas the home I worked in in England would have five carers for nearly forty residents. The idea with there being five carers on the floor would be that you would have two doubles, who would go and look after the residents who needed two people for their personal care (they would typically be people who could not move without assistance but could also be residents who were prone to violence), and then have one carer who would work on their own to get up the residents who only needed one carer to get them up.
For some reason after the first week or so, I would invariably be put on the singles every single shift that I worked, even though who worked singles and doubles was supposed to be mixed up every shift. You weren't supposed to have one person constantly on the singles, but they didn't particularly care.
Unfortunately I was still quite new to working on a dementia ward. It was quite different from where I had previously worked, because a lot of the residents had emotional issues and could get angry very quickly. I would be told "go get so-and-so washed and dressed and get them a new pad", and so I'd go get ready to do that. I'd go in so-and-so's room and tell them what I was there for, only to be told to go away, fuck off, what have you. I'd try to reason with them, tell them that I couldn't leave them as they were because they were dirty, only to have them tell me they were absolutely fine as they were and to go away. Some residents would start getting very emotional and start shouting and crying, some residents would try to attack me, one even tried to break my fingers and my arm on two separate occasions. I would then go and ask my colleagues for help, only for them to sigh irritably and tell me to essentially buck up and deal with it. They'd say that I'd have to just learn to coax them with my words, or trick them. Issue is, I'm not great at that sort of thing. I do not possess a silver tongue, and I had no idea how to convince someone to let me do something they had no intention of letting me do. Then a colleague would come along, persuade the resident in about five seconds, and then say "you just need to learn to do that". Great, thanks. It's like saying to someone who can't read "you just need to learn how to read".
This all came to a head this last Saturday. I don't know why, but absolutely none of the singles I was asked to dress would let me help them. There was one I was supposed to give a shower to but kept angrily shouting "I'm not having a shower". I asked someone what to do about that, they came over and got them into the shower within about twenty seconds. Great, kind of difficult not to feel stupid about that.
One resident tried to break my fingers and so I obviously went to ask for help about that. Where I used to work in England we were told that if a resident was violent to you you had the right to leave in order to protect yourself. Here I was basically told "deal with it lol". I did end up with a colleague helping me out with the resident but I was still made to feel stupid, which is something I tend to feel a lot anyway.
Later that evening, I was called into the nurse's office. I was told my colleagues had complained about me because I'd needed help with the singles. The nurse was friendly and polite, but told me that compared to the doubles I hadn't really been given that much to do. (Amusingly enough, I much prefer working doubles because it's something I actually feel I'm competent at.) I explained that I hadn't worked on a nursing floor or dementia ward before and was still unsure how to sweet-talk some of the more aggressive residents. He gave me some advice, and then dismissed me. I found one of my colleagues who complained and apologised to her. She said that I just needed to learn to coax the residents into allowing me to give personal care, and that I needed to be quicker (a lot of the time is spent either trying to convince a resident to let me get them sorted or trying to find clothes that aren't there). I then went to see if I could get another resident to get sorted and ready for bed. Of course they didn't, possibly because they were just in a bad mood or possibly because they could sense my growing stress and desperation and didn't like it.
Since leaving the nurse's office I'd been on the verge of crying (which is pretty fucking embarrassing when you're a six-foot-two going-on-25 year old bloke), and this just pretty much sealed the deal. I found the nurse and told him that I was struggling to get a resident to comply (note that I'd spent about five minutes trying to convince them), realised I was about to start crying, and... went and hid in the bathroom. I just couldn't handle it. Most of the time if I'm feeling miserable I manage not to cry (especially if other people are around), but not this time. It was like I was a kid again trying to hide it for fear of being mocked, ridiculed or yelled at.
Anyway, I spent a few minutes in the bathroom calming down, washed my face and then, feeling better I went back outside. I went around the corner to get some fresh PPE, and a colleague came and snapped at me "I asked you to do so-and-so, I just checked them and they're saturated. Why haven't you done them?"
What I wanted to say was "because I thought the nurse had told me that he'd done him." That was what I thought he'd said, obviously I'd misunderstood. What I actually said was "I don't know." That was basically what I said every time I was told off as a kid (or rather, every time someone yelled at me for no reason as a kid), because when I got yelled at it would frighten me and make it hard for me to find any other words. And basically it was like I was a kid again. She seemed to realise that I was utterly miserable though, and started telling me that she wasn't giving me a hard time, and that she didn't want me going home down-hearted, and that I could even pick the singles I was going to do the next day - oh joy - but I'd decided at that moment that I was done. I'd stick around for the rest of my shift (which was about twenty minutes at that point), but I wasn't coming in the next day.
I got a phone call a couple days later from HR asking why I'd resigned - particularly as I'd only worked there a month - and I told them that I didn't feel I was getting a lot of help. I found it incredibly stressful, and I was on the singles every shift even though I was still new and unsure of how to work with such highly strung residents. There was more I could have said - particularly how I was generally ignored unless I was told to do something - but I didn't want people getting in trouble. Story of my life really.
The difference between where I worked in England and where I worked in Northern Ireland are that the first place was a residential care home, and the place in Northern Ireland was a nursing ward specifically for people with dementia. Residential care homes have no nurses on staff, meaning that if for example a resident has a bedsore and needs their dressing changed, you need to arrange for the district nurse to come do it. Therefore typically, the residents are healthier and have fewer health issues. Where I worked in particular, the residents generally were fairly easy to get on with and if they needed assistance with personal care they would generally let you get on with it and wouldn't get unhappy or violent.
However, the home I worked at in Northern Ireland was quite different. For one thing, we were assigned wards that we would work on throughout the day, and there would be five carers per ward. My ward had about fifteen or sixteen residents living on it, whereas the home I worked in in England would have five carers for nearly forty residents. The idea with there being five carers on the floor would be that you would have two doubles, who would go and look after the residents who needed two people for their personal care (they would typically be people who could not move without assistance but could also be residents who were prone to violence), and then have one carer who would work on their own to get up the residents who only needed one carer to get them up.
For some reason after the first week or so, I would invariably be put on the singles every single shift that I worked, even though who worked singles and doubles was supposed to be mixed up every shift. You weren't supposed to have one person constantly on the singles, but they didn't particularly care.
Unfortunately I was still quite new to working on a dementia ward. It was quite different from where I had previously worked, because a lot of the residents had emotional issues and could get angry very quickly. I would be told "go get so-and-so washed and dressed and get them a new pad", and so I'd go get ready to do that. I'd go in so-and-so's room and tell them what I was there for, only to be told to go away, fuck off, what have you. I'd try to reason with them, tell them that I couldn't leave them as they were because they were dirty, only to have them tell me they were absolutely fine as they were and to go away. Some residents would start getting very emotional and start shouting and crying, some residents would try to attack me, one even tried to break my fingers and my arm on two separate occasions. I would then go and ask my colleagues for help, only for them to sigh irritably and tell me to essentially buck up and deal with it. They'd say that I'd have to just learn to coax them with my words, or trick them. Issue is, I'm not great at that sort of thing. I do not possess a silver tongue, and I had no idea how to convince someone to let me do something they had no intention of letting me do. Then a colleague would come along, persuade the resident in about five seconds, and then say "you just need to learn to do that". Great, thanks. It's like saying to someone who can't read "you just need to learn how to read".
This all came to a head this last Saturday. I don't know why, but absolutely none of the singles I was asked to dress would let me help them. There was one I was supposed to give a shower to but kept angrily shouting "I'm not having a shower". I asked someone what to do about that, they came over and got them into the shower within about twenty seconds. Great, kind of difficult not to feel stupid about that.
One resident tried to break my fingers and so I obviously went to ask for help about that. Where I used to work in England we were told that if a resident was violent to you you had the right to leave in order to protect yourself. Here I was basically told "deal with it lol". I did end up with a colleague helping me out with the resident but I was still made to feel stupid, which is something I tend to feel a lot anyway.
Later that evening, I was called into the nurse's office. I was told my colleagues had complained about me because I'd needed help with the singles. The nurse was friendly and polite, but told me that compared to the doubles I hadn't really been given that much to do. (Amusingly enough, I much prefer working doubles because it's something I actually feel I'm competent at.) I explained that I hadn't worked on a nursing floor or dementia ward before and was still unsure how to sweet-talk some of the more aggressive residents. He gave me some advice, and then dismissed me. I found one of my colleagues who complained and apologised to her. She said that I just needed to learn to coax the residents into allowing me to give personal care, and that I needed to be quicker (a lot of the time is spent either trying to convince a resident to let me get them sorted or trying to find clothes that aren't there). I then went to see if I could get another resident to get sorted and ready for bed. Of course they didn't, possibly because they were just in a bad mood or possibly because they could sense my growing stress and desperation and didn't like it.
Since leaving the nurse's office I'd been on the verge of crying (which is pretty fucking embarrassing when you're a six-foot-two going-on-25 year old bloke), and this just pretty much sealed the deal. I found the nurse and told him that I was struggling to get a resident to comply (note that I'd spent about five minutes trying to convince them), realised I was about to start crying, and... went and hid in the bathroom. I just couldn't handle it. Most of the time if I'm feeling miserable I manage not to cry (especially if other people are around), but not this time. It was like I was a kid again trying to hide it for fear of being mocked, ridiculed or yelled at.
Anyway, I spent a few minutes in the bathroom calming down, washed my face and then, feeling better I went back outside. I went around the corner to get some fresh PPE, and a colleague came and snapped at me "I asked you to do so-and-so, I just checked them and they're saturated. Why haven't you done them?"
What I wanted to say was "because I thought the nurse had told me that he'd done him." That was what I thought he'd said, obviously I'd misunderstood. What I actually said was "I don't know." That was basically what I said every time I was told off as a kid (or rather, every time someone yelled at me for no reason as a kid), because when I got yelled at it would frighten me and make it hard for me to find any other words. And basically it was like I was a kid again. She seemed to realise that I was utterly miserable though, and started telling me that she wasn't giving me a hard time, and that she didn't want me going home down-hearted, and that I could even pick the singles I was going to do the next day - oh joy - but I'd decided at that moment that I was done. I'd stick around for the rest of my shift (which was about twenty minutes at that point), but I wasn't coming in the next day.
I got a phone call a couple days later from HR asking why I'd resigned - particularly as I'd only worked there a month - and I told them that I didn't feel I was getting a lot of help. I found it incredibly stressful, and I was on the singles every shift even though I was still new and unsure of how to work with such highly strung residents. There was more I could have said - particularly how I was generally ignored unless I was told to do something - but I didn't want people getting in trouble. Story of my life really.
