I just sent in my two-weeks notice at the Memory Care residence.
The worst thing was not the low pay, it was the near impossibility of implementing Best Practices in Dementia Care, despite the marketing department's much trumpeted advertisement that they provide them.
I took this job thinking of it an an internship. But as the thirty-first (31st!) resident moves into Memory Care, I find myself mostly doing crowd control without time to learn and explore much else.
This on top of being paid like a high schooler but expected to do the job a director, from training-in my coworkers to designing programs for people aged two to one hundred.
The final straw was learning that my boss, the full-time activities director, is going on leave all summer long, and management is replacing her at only 20-hours/week with a young person "not yet ready to be a director".
I found this out yesterday at the meeting where management spent one minute giving me the Employee of the Month award (I'd come in on my day off for this) and ten minutes talking about the pet policy, because a dog had "left a present" outside the administrator's window.
I am sad to leave the residents, but at least I won't feel guilty thinking of them missing me, because they won't notice I'm gone. They won't remember me today when I appear on the floor, which I am just about to do. But I'll miss them––I expect they'll appear in my dreams for years, as do residents from previous nursing homes where I've worked.
I trust I have done well by them, so I am proud of that.
I think maybe I'll give up on the idea of working in health care, though, after two failed tries now.
For the next couple months, I'm going to focus, focus, focus on writing the book I just signed on for--I can't afford to spend as much time on this book as I have on my previous books, so I really want to get cracking---and hopefully I'll get more short-term publishing work too.
We shall see.
Right now, mostly I just feel relieved.
The worst thing was not the low pay, it was the near impossibility of implementing Best Practices in Dementia Care, despite the marketing department's much trumpeted advertisement that they provide them.
I took this job thinking of it an an internship. But as the thirty-first (31st!) resident moves into Memory Care, I find myself mostly doing crowd control without time to learn and explore much else.
This on top of being paid like a high schooler but expected to do the job a director, from training-in my coworkers to designing programs for people aged two to one hundred.
The final straw was learning that my boss, the full-time activities director, is going on leave all summer long, and management is replacing her at only 20-hours/week with a young person "not yet ready to be a director".
I found this out yesterday at the meeting where management spent one minute giving me the Employee of the Month award (I'd come in on my day off for this) and ten minutes talking about the pet policy, because a dog had "left a present" outside the administrator's window.
I am sad to leave the residents, but at least I won't feel guilty thinking of them missing me, because they won't notice I'm gone. They won't remember me today when I appear on the floor, which I am just about to do. But I'll miss them––I expect they'll appear in my dreams for years, as do residents from previous nursing homes where I've worked.
I trust I have done well by them, so I am proud of that.
I think maybe I'll give up on the idea of working in health care, though, after two failed tries now.
For the next couple months, I'm going to focus, focus, focus on writing the book I just signed on for--I can't afford to spend as much time on this book as I have on my previous books, so I really want to get cracking---and hopefully I'll get more short-term publishing work too.
We shall see.
Right now, mostly I just feel relieved.
