LTC Success

I agree.

LTC is NOT for me, but it has nothing to do with it being "easy" or "hard".

For me it is an emotional thing: the residents there remind me of my grandparents. During CNA rotations and now during 1st quarter LPN rotations, I am in LTC facilities. I give the very BEST care that I can, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart; then, later... after I get home... I get into a blue funk that scares my wife!

I can handle "blood n guts" with the best of them; sweet little old ladies and gentlemen in their twilight years, waiting to be fed, toileted, or cleaned up just breaks my heart.

I wouldn't be able to be a nurse very long if my only option was LTC; just too darn emotionally demanding.

All aspects of nursing are VERY rewarding. I have worked many of them including Long Term Care. Being a patient advocate in many directions is what it is all about. My rewarding experiences are the ones that I actually knew something personal about the patient and was able to help in comforting them. Make a call to a son, take care of the dog that was in the car during an accident, discuss end of life issues with patient and family to help with a decision, bring a kindergarten class into an ICU for a teacher with terminal illness, let a wife sit and chat with a man who is going to die in the next few hours no matter what we do, take a dying woman outside to sit in the rain before she dies of lung cancer the following day, and have you ever dissolved a tootsie roll so it can be swabbed in a patients mouth...just because he loved them so much.