Nurses build long-term relationships with residents
Friday, May 18, 2007 -- Deron Hamel
Ask John Donzil and Rebecca Young what they like best about working in long-term care and they’ll tell you it’s the people they meet.
Donzil, assistant director of care at Forest Hill, went straight into long-term care nursing after graduating from nursing school in 2003.
“I started right away,” he says. “I chose long-term care because you build lasting relationships with families.”
A six-year veteran of the Kanata long-term care home, Young echoes Donzil’s sentiments when asked what she likes best about her job as a registered practical nurse.
“For me, it’s the building of the emotional relationships with residents and their families to make the lives of residents (better),” she says. “In hospitals, people come in and out of your life all the time. In long-term care, we (look after) residents for (a long time).”
A major benefit for nurses working in long-term care, Donzil says, is that they use a broad range of skills. Unlike hospital nursing where nurses are only trained to perform physical assessments, long-term care nurses are trained in both physical and mental assessment of residents.
Donzil acknowledges that there is a nurse shortage in the long-term care sector. He feels nursing students and graduates need to be encouraged to participate in work placements in long-term care homes to get a first-hand understanding of the sector.
One suggestion Donzil offers is that long-term care homes address nursing students directly by doing presentations at colleges and universities.
“It’s difficult to get nurses into long-term care, so we have to make sound more positive to graduates,” he says.
The nurse shortage in long-term care homes can create difficult challenges for residents and staff. With many homes operating with a limited number of staff members, nurses find themselves overworked, says Young.
“A lot of the families expect a lot, but we’re so limited with the amount of staff we have,” she says. “We could do some wonderful things here if we had some more nurses and health-care aides.”
For more information on careers in long-term care nursing, contact OMNI’s home office at (705) 748-6631.
