Published
That is one of the rewarding and beautiful moments of working with the elderly. One of the best ways to understand them is to put yourself in their place. I wish i could find this poem i read once, entitled "WHAT DO YOU SEE, NURSE". These are people that have raised families, had careers, have loved, laughed and cried the same as all of us, unfortunately, sometimes they are just looked upon as useless and in the way.I'm glad you love what you're doing. I certainly did during my years with them PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE
ComicRN
62 Posts
Happy Saturday everyone! Just wanted to share something with you. I am the clinical coordinator on a 45 bed long-term care floor. Our residents run the gamut from totally alert and oriented to totally demented. It's a great floor to work on because of the variety of personalities.
One of our residents is a lady in her 80's who is fully ambulatory, yet has dementia. Most of the time when she speaks it is non-sensical and she very rarely makes eye contact. Last Sunday I went in to do some paperwork. It was real quiet on the floor. I was sitting at my desk and Sophie walked into the nurse's station (as she often does) and was just sort of looking at things. I said hi to her and invited her to sit down next to me. She didn't sit, but came up in front of me and just sort of looked around me while I kept talking to her.
She then looked right in my face and put her hand on my head and started stroking my hair. She had the sweetest smile on her face. It was as though she was remembering something from her past. The moment didn't last long, and she was soon distracted by something else. But, I was very moved by the moment and it reminded me of why I go to work every day.