And no, not like a college RA in the dorms kind of RA. Back in my hometown, and pretty much my entire working career, I’ve been working in senior living. Back when the pandemic started, I decided to leave my old job after two and a half years and went from working in skilled nursing to an assisted living home. The main difference in these types of homes is in how much care the residents needed. In Assisted Living, the residents are pretty independent for the most part but may need some help here and there. In the close to nine months I’ve spent there, I’ve trained all around the community. I began in the kitchen as a server and then crossed trained as a receptionist. I spent the entire summer doing this until going back up to IUP in August. I came home in October for a few weeks and learned housekeeping and still helped out where I was able to. Throughout my first six months, they had asked me a few times if I wanted to cross-train over as an RA. At my job, an RA is basically an uncertified CNA. For the longest time, I kept telling them no thinking I couldn’t handle it, it would be too gross, and quite honestly, I was so scared to hurt the residents by accident.
Back in November, I decided to come home early for the semester. When talking to my executive director, she asked if I wanted to train over as an RA and that they really needed the help. Between her confidence in me and some of my other coworkers telling me I’d be great at it, I finally decided “Why not?” and agreed to do it. I knew all of the other departments and could always help out in other areas if I didn’t actually like being an RA. I was so nervous, but I wanted the challenge and was ready to try something outside of my comfort zone. Plus, I wouldn’t know if I liked it or not until I actually gave it a fair shot.
When I went into this, I never changed anyone’s diaper, not a younger sibling, cousins, none of it. I went into this with ZERO nursing experience. I was used to serving the residents their food, not helping them use the bathroom or pick their outfits for the day. I’m not even majoring in nursing, and here I am learning how to empty out catheters, properly transfer, and shower the residents. During training, I only felt comfortable standing by and observing. I came home from work and my parents asked how I liked it and at first, all I told them was “I don’t know.”
As I got deeper into training, I realized a lot of it was more self-explanatory than I had thought. Since I had worked in every department before that, I already knew the residents, it was just learning their needs beyond working in the kitchen. The hardest part for me was learning how to transfer the residents and doing it without hurting myself, or them. I struggled so much and honestly felt dumb when I’d radio my coworkers for assistance. I’d beat myself up over it, but I had to remind myself that this was still SO new to me and everyone started at this point. Eventually, I was able to do it alone. The day I was able to take a hallway on my own and needed very little assistant was the day I finally told myself “I can do this” and truly believed it.
Since then, I decided that being a Resident Assistant is the area I wanted to stay in when I came home from school and went back to work. What I love about this position the most is having a deeper relationship with the residents. It was one thing knowing all their drink orders and how they liked certain things at their meals, but it was different spending 40+ hours a week actually taking care of them on a deeper level. There was a different satisfaction leaving work after an 8 or 12-hour shift knowing that your residents were cared for and you made a difference in their day. Even if that reason that their day was made because you put their laundry away for them because they’re unable to. Being an RA really taught me that while the residents receiving their care is important, it’s really the little things in what you do that they appreciate the most.
Learning the nursing aspects of my job was one of the best things I could have done for myself in my career growth and my own personal growth. It helped me learn how to be more patient, more compassionate, and more about the residents as individuals. While having all this nursing home experience does look great on a resume, it means so much more to me than that. Knowing that I’m making a difference daily is the most important thing to me. If I did that, then I know that I did my job right for the day.