I did retirement home training and used to think it was a sweet job. Then I got in the business and underestimated how demoralizing it was as they give you the easy elders in training while the others make you, or at least me, really think of the fact the job just amounts to an unkarmic freebie.
If you’re saying that you uniquely oppose the existence of elder care as an occupation, then that is a very strange, and frankly worrisome example. Am I misinterpreting what you meant? Also, I don’t know what to make of “unkarmic freebie.”
Having known some people in elder care, the reality is that some old people are nasty, brutish, mean, racist, misogynist, creepy, violent, you fucking name it, there’s some old person you’re going to have to take care of who matches that horrible personality. You’re paid the same whether you’re helping someone you like or someone who is rude and assaults you every time you enter the room.
I agree with you, elder care should still exist, but I can see why some people get tired of taking care of terrible old people who were likely terrible people all their lives and who are just allowed abuse you. Why are they allowed to abuse you? Because most people who do elder care and underpaid, overworked, and don’t have a lot of other options that pay nearly as well. Basically you’re accepting middling but better than fast-food pay to have abuse dumped on you. I can see how someone feels like its a karmic freebie because there’s no responsibility in any of it, generally management won’t do anything about “problem elders.” Get to be a fucking asshole your whole life and then get to be a fucking asshole to the person wiping your ass before you die.
I have a similar story from another friend who ended up at a mental health hospital in a violent youth ward. He was underpaid, overworked, and responsible for about 30 violent and dangerous kids with unstable mental health issues that made them difficult to approach. If he was busy helping one kid take their meds, and another kid on the ward was in the same moment trying to take their own life and succeeded, he would be the one responsible. He was not being paid enough or had enough support to justify taking full responsibility for things that are outside his control when he cannot magically manage 30 dangerous cases at once. He left the job after two months of assaults and scares. I don’t blame him, and he doesn’t blame himself, and we also understand that those 30 cases deserve better care than they’re getting but it’s not his responsibility as an individual to make up for the shortcomings of government funding for this.
Same with people who work elder care. It’s not their individual responsibility to make up for the fact that these companies don’t give a damn about the people they’re caring for, and each elder is just an income stream in a database. The number of people I know in elder care who now have permanent back problems because they’re being expected to lift 300lb old people off their beds and they’re not being given proper equipment for it is too damn high. These people do not deserve to have their bodies broken and paid pennies on the dollar to be abused by the elders in their care, not given the right tools to do the job, with a prevailing attitude of “they’re just old people, how bad can they hurt you really?” Pretty fucking bad, shockingly.
Elder care needs to exist. Does it need to exist as it exists now in the USA? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
In the kids case, that’s a staffing issue. Most lockdown mental health facilities have a tech/CNA whose sole job it is to walk around and log the location and state of every patient every 9-15min, depending on policy. In addition to the techs/CNAs who herd everyone to group, meals, and all the rest. In addition to mental health staff that run the groups. In addition to nurses who do meds and assessments. In addition to “orderlies”, not big men in white like in movies, who tackle people these days, but people with intense training in deescalation.
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In the elder case, that is often a staffing issue. If it’s day shift and you have more than 6 residents assigned to you, that’s a staffing and/or state level regulation issue. If it’s evening shift and you have more than 8 residents assigned to you, that’s a staffing and/or state regulation issue. But yes, declining mental health (dementia) and brain deterioration (Alzheimer’s) is part of elder care. Sometimes it’s the sole reason they’re placed in a home, because that decline in brain capacity requires 24h care.
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A lot of health care jobs would be absolutely ok if they were actually safe for both patients and staff. But corporate greed often doesn’t allow for that.
Staffing matters. And it often will be ignored until the state mandates a law that requires the corporate owners to do better.
Dementia often causes personality changes. It can make really nice people into assholes, and it can turn people who were real bastards into the reverse.