Ivy Sheward’s CBSL Blog #2: Pioneer Lodge Care Home
Re-visit your blog post of your initial impressions of your CBSL. How accurate were your initial thoughts of your placement experience - how have they changed, or not? Has anything surprised you? What, to date, has been your greatest learning experience or area of growth with your placement?
As I read this week’s prompt, I can’t help but feel like I didn’t do my last CBSL blog right...
My initial thoughts were actually very close to what I have been doing! I’ve been doing ‘All About Me’s’ for the residents every Friday for an hour and then the Nursing student and I gather the residents in the recreation room for Happy Hour (an hour of music and a drink if they want). By now I have mostly figured out who like to come down and who doesn’t. It can be a little nerve-racking, believe it or not... some of the residents fight and you have to make sure they are seated far enough apart. Other than that, I have been reading to residents, enjoying music time with residents and carving pumpkins with them.
Things that surprised me are how angry some of the residents can be, the smallest things can upset them, such as another resident talking or being placed in the recreation room wrong. It is a hard job to do when you have some grumpier residents, such as the other day when they had their vaccine shots, everyone was a little irritable.
My greatest learning experience has been a few small ones that built into a bigger one. As I mentioned before, some of the residents can be mad or grumpy but I promise nothing feels better than making them smile. I have had to exercise my patience with some and become firm with others which is hard for me because I would rather not have to speak sternly to them (when they get into fights). I’m learning that sometimes it is worth it to practice some patience just to make them happier, which I think will suit me well in teaching. Overall I’m having fun and though there are some bad days, I’m finally starting to build relationships with some residents which I am so happy about.
