May 2020
Read Carla’s story about how she fell in love with being a care home Nurse
I just hoped to go home at the end of each day having been able to make someone more comfortable or feel better in some way. It could be by making sure they get to speak to their families on the phone, or spending time listening to their worries or woes, and hopefully they feel like they have spoken to another person who just really cares how they are and how they feel.
Carla Barningham, Head of Care, Larkrise.
I am sure all the Nurses would agree that no two days are the same! That gets said so often but it’s true, how could they be when we are people looking after people? As Head of Care I check in with the Home Manager and the Bursar, then the Care Leaders and other Nurses. We talk about any changes from the past 12-24 hours. I attend the daily team meeting where we discuss everything and anything and usually where the next best ideas come from, it's all about making sure the residents get the best from us.
I can be on any of the three households at any given time depending on what I am needed for. I usually start with one of the monthly audits that leads me to helping with one person or many people. I spend a lot of the day communicating a lot of information on the phone, in emails, and with people face to face. This could be because of a person looking to come into the home or a new person who has only just moved in.
When we don't have restrictive access like we do at this moment due to COVID-19, the home is usually full of people coming and going, from Social Workers, Boots delivery, the chiropodist, Vision Call, GP and family and friends. This means I can also spend some time being in customer services and chatting to those stakeholders, seeing how they are doing and what they are with us for on that day.
I look after all of the ordering of the stock for the home, medical and non-medical. Portions of my time can be HR orientated and when I am not supervising the care team I do love to spend time with the residents, at this moment in time it is more important than ever to me personally that I stay with people who are poorly especially if they are at the end of their life. But at other times I like to speak to residents and their families just to make sure they are OK and see if there is anything I can do, or our team can do to make things better for them. I also organise the training in the home and this can be sporadic sometimes there is a lot to organise at once and sometimes not. I deliver the moving and handling training which is nice because I get to spend time with our new starters.
One way I’ve made a difference as a Nurse is…
I can't choose one way I just can’t! Every day I hope to make a difference just to one person at least. I think just by being a Nurse well, just by choosing to be in this vocation I make a difference. I started work as a carer when I was younger and my outlook was very much the same as it is now, I just hoped to go home at the end of each day having been able to make someone more comfortable, or feel better in some way. It could be by making sure they get to speak to their families on the phone, or spending time listening to their worries or woes, and hopefully they feel like they have spoken to another person who just really cares how they are and how they feel. I hope that no matter what I am doing with that person or for that person at that moment in time I put them at ease and that they feel like they can trust me.
I chose to work in the elderly care home sector because…
Ironically it was not my first choice when I qualified but circumstances led me to taking a job in a care home as a Nurse. I had other plans initially and wanted to get my first six months experience in the bag, but I fell in love with what I do and on day one and I never looked back. I feel like this is an area of care that is sometimes overlooked, and older people are viewed as hard to relate to, but they are me and you. We will be them one day and I would hope that people ‘see me’ just like I am now.
I think it is important to celebrate International Nurses’ Day because…
There are so many different Nurses and we specialise in different areas of care and nursing, we can be found in every single ward at the hospital, out in the community, in your homes, and in your GP surgeries. We do not all wear a uniform, so we are not always obvious, we look after the young and the old and we do this because we care. Because at some point when we were busy growing up we realised that we needed to look after other people, and that gives us a great sense of purpose and pleasure to see other people feel better and we do this knowing that it must be done at any time with anyone in any place.
To make complicated situations feel easier and to take the worry away, to hold someone’s hand while they are scared, angry, frightened, delighted, or thrilled is priceless. We make sure people are safe, and we do this by giving advice or medicine or sometimes silence. We often see pictures of Nurses on Nurses day with their uniforms on and their stethoscopes around their necks or in hospitals in their scrubs, but there are so many others out there too. We are also people, so we are living with cancer, we are divorced, or we are sharing our children, we are grieving our own loved ones and losses, and we are celebrating weddings, births and graduations. We are putting the washing on and the bins out and trying to make plans with family and friends to have a day off and let our hair down.
All the while we are carrying around other people in our hearts, and when we come to work we do our best to put all of that to one side so we can tend the wounds that are physical or mental to those we care for, and we do it because we must because it's our job and our calling and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
My advice to someone considering a career in nursing would be…
If you are considering it then you already know what you want to do and if it makes your heart happy when you think about it and you can imagine yourself doing the job, then just do it! Don’t be scared of all the exams and the paperwork because it can be done, we are supported in so many ways to get the information we need to firstly qualify and then even when we get into the role, we are always, always part of a team, so we are never alone, the MDT might be made up of different professionals wherever you go but they are there too, and together you make a difference, so absolutely do it.
Also, because there are so many roles you can do and so many areas you can specialise in you don’t have to worry if one aspect is just not for you. Even Nurses have to know what they can do and what they can’t do. You can work with children, adults, older people, you can work in general or in mental health, or learning disabilities. You can work in a hospital or in a hospice or a care home or a treatment centre, you can go on to become a specialist or carry on with learning.
It’s hard, it’s the most tired I have ever been while I was studying and working, but I have been tired serving customers, walking dogs, being a waitress, selling phones and being a lifeguard but I have never been so happy as being a Nurse. Also, because I am biased, I recommend nursing homes, you learn new things all the time as people come in with all sorts of medical health concerns that vary from the small and manageable, to the complicated and challenging. I have looked after people with Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, HIV, and people with stomas and urostomy’s and peg feeds, people with diabetes and cancer and amputations. It’s not a quiet life by any means in a nursing home. But it is a home as well, so you can be with the people you look after for longer and you can get to know their families too and you can celebrate with them and join in with their lives. We work in their homes; they do not live in our work.