That it’s easy! Or that geriatric nurses (who typically work in nursing homes) don’t have excellent skills! I did it for 13 years and can say we have better than excellent skills because we don’t have fancy equipment to utilize for assessing various systems (no telemetry etc) and have to rely solely on our eyes, ears, hands and brain!!! I can tell you when a patient has a fib by listening to their heart and/or feeling their pulse. (Something many ICU nurses can’t even do because they rely heavily on their monitors to detect it) I can tell you when a patient is about to start declining before they show symptoms that are blatantly obvious. We have so many skills that hospital nurses never fully develop, because we HAVE to rely on our senses and our training. We don’t have doctors at our immediate disposal to address issues and have to do our best to stabilize patients or make the decision to send them out 911 rather than waiting for hours to get a return call from a doctor.
That nurses who work in Long Term Care only do so because they can't work anyplace else....I even had a paramedic tell me once that LTC nurses aren't "real" nurses. I told him that the work in LTC is often more difficult due to the fact that a high percentage of our patients have dementia or communication deficits of some kind, so we have to be real detectives when they have a change in condition and cannot describe it to us.
That you deal with primarily confused residents. That you are cleaning up feces and urine all day and putting up with bad odors.
biggest...they're grumpy, mean, and crazy. older adults are usually lonely, afraid, and feel worthless. they need nurses who smile, listen, and touch them for comfort. I've worked with geriatrics for over 15 yrs and still enjoy my job.
That it’s easy!!! Therefore we have no skills or knowledge base.
The biggest misconceptions of working with the Geriatric population are:
Confusion and dementia is the normal in the aging process.
They are set in their ways
The nurses are nothing but baby sitter
The nurses do not deserve special pay
That the only thing we so is push a medcart
I believe that the biggest misconception about geriatric nursing is:" Geriatric nursing are just like any other nursing - only difference is the patients are older".
1. People come to nursing homes to die. Not going to lie and say that some don't, we do get hospice patients. We also get rehab patients and some that live in the facilities for 20 years or more. The reason it's called long term care
2. You lose your nursing skills. Excuse me? I deal with cardiac, pulmonary, Ortho, endocrine, mental health.....the whole scope! And now days it's not just a specific age group. Some of our residents are in their 20s to 30s
3. It's easy! No, not really. You will stay very busy. Depending on your shift, you can have 25 to 45 residents in your care, in some facilities more. Meds, though we are getting more med techs, treatments, contacting doctors, families, pharmacy, lab, x-ray, plus all the documentation. At least in my area, long term care pays their nurses more than the hospitals and it's because it's a very demanding job.
4. It's depressing. There are days, I won't deny it. But it can actually be fun. They can get very competitive with games, they love music and crafts, and a lot of them have no trouble saying whatever comes to mind, and have great senses of humor. And you can learn a lot. These are the people who did our jobs and many others before all the advancements we've gotten used to. The stories they have to tell!
It's not for everyone, I know. I've been in the field almost 40 years and seen many come and go. But it can be very rewarding
That nurses in LTC have no skills and can’t get a job anywhere else. So untrue!
That the patients are not aware of what’s going on around them and that as they grow older that they have a hard time adjusting to their new lives as it is.
