Christmas at the nursing home

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Walk down the halls of my facility and you will see the elves have been busy. Staff came in on their own time to help the activities department decorate for the holiday. The resident/family Christmas party was a huge success. Everyone was dressed in their holiday best. Today we had the Secret Santa present party...Santa arrived and every resident in the building received a present. The look on the faces of these residents was a wonderful thing to see.

Anyone can complain about how horrible nursing homes are....anyone can say the companies are only out to make money. I say those people deserve coal in their stockings. Where I work, the spirit of Christmas is alive and well.

Thank you to all the staff.

Merry Christmas to all those on Allnurses.

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Specializes in LTC, Memory loss, PDN.

AWESOME

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It's nursing homes like this that make me proud to have worked in LTC for over 11 years! We love our residents like our own families. Merry Christmas and God bless!

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

My nursing home does something similar for the residents every year, complete with a visit from Santa. After all, we are FAMILY and we treat our residents as such. :yes: They're the reason we have jobs!

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Every nursing home should have a DON like you.. It would be a far better world.. I think you are one of the heroes of LTC..

Merry Christmas to you, this year and every year.

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

There were lots of presents being handed out at my facility. I have to say my two favorite came from the staff.

One nurse gave me a giant hug on Christmas Eve and thanked me for everything I'd done the past year to support the entire staff...the other was a comment from a CNA. "You're not like any other DON we've ever had and I've been here 19 years. You really care about us." (this was a day after I had to fire 3 people for various reasons) It's a good thing I keep a box of tissues on my desk!

Our jobs carry a huge amount of responsibility whether we're working in the kitchen or handing out meds or helping someone walk down the hall. There is an indescribable amount of stress associated with long term care. Most of us stick with it because we know at the end of the day we've made a difference in the lives of the people we are caring for and in some cases for the people working with us.

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If only this was the normal and not the exception. I bet the residents really enjoyed themselves.

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Specializes in LTC.

Our facility is similar. We do a resident Christmas party and staff buys for our residents. Then on Christmas eve, presents are laid out for our residents to open Christmas AM. Not one resident goes without at a gift. I worked Christmas eve and it was a joyful place to be. Every resident I went to give meds to I wished them Merry Christmas and reminded them "Tomorrow is Christmas". It was one of my best Christmas eves I have had.

One of our residents was tearful Christmas eve....he was worried b/c we weren't home with our families and "had to " care for him. Several of us went in reassured him that we were where we wanted to be and that we loved to care for our folks....he still said that "you should be home with your grandchildren" to our 22 yo CNA...lol

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

This has been the norm in 7 of the 8 facilities I've worked in. Might have been 8/8 but I wasn't in one place at Christmas.

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Perhaps the fact that you were working there had something to do with it.. Judging from your posts, you are very, very good at what you do, and encourage others to be the same.

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