Feeling appreciated

Before the school year started, I quit my job at the assisted living community. I was struggling with the decision all summer, as I worked 12 days in a row sometimes, watched my boss be demoted, then fired, the med room torn apart and moved into a resident apartment to work out of tupperwares.

See, a lot of the problems that I was concerned about with the way medications were handled, the overall level of care of the residents, who was allowed to be a resident vs needing a higher level of care, education of the people in charge of "assisting" (administering) medications, mistakes being made, etc .... a lot of these problems, and more, finally made it into the owners' awareness when a hired auditor came to check out or building.  Before that, they were perfectly happy with looking the other direction, sweeping mistakes under the rug, and having people in charge that had no idea what they were doing.

For a while there, all of the med techs and caregivers thought we were going to be fired, collectively. The company that was taking us over had done something similar with another assisted living community in town a couple years ago.

I decided it wasn't worth the levels of stress I was experiencing for $11 an hour, the random shifts, the schedule changes, the constant distraction from school. So I put in my notice, and made a leap of faith in to private caregiving instead for the remainder of the time before I get my RN license.

I haven't been back to the building for about 6 weeks now, but recently took on a new private caregiving client that also happens to live at the community I left. So I was back there last night.

When the other residents and caregivers saw me, there were smiles, and hugs, and more hugs, and one resident cried she was so happy to see me. There's something very personally gratifying and self indulgent about seeing and hearing the evidence that I've been missed.