 Hi everyone and welcome back to the vlog. My name is Claire Carmichael, a newly qualified nurse working in a GP. Today I'm going to be talking all about working in a care home, something that I haven't seen much of that I really want to cover because I've loved my time in the care homes. I started my time in care homes in 2005, I think it was like the spring time roughly and this is literally where I fell in love with nursing. I started there as a healthcare assistant. I did eventually work my way up to become a team leader which was amazing. I was trained as a healthcare assistant to give medications. I know healthcare assistants given medications. What? Yes, so you are trained. We had Boots Pharmacy guys come in and trainers on medications and we had to know quite a bit actually about side effects and things like that of medications and what each one was for and how to sort of fill out a march art because back then it was march arts which is the medication administration record report record and it was just like a big sheet and you sort of sign it off. Some of you might have seen this because some places still have the sort of old drug charts that you fill out. So the sort of things that I did in the care home was a lot of personal care so helping people that can't really help themselves and need that little bit of assistance to sort of get washed, get dressed, showering, bathing, a lot of hoist work as well so there's a lot of people that I had in the home I worked at. We had hoists to hoist people that can't physically walk or move. We used different sort of manual handling techniques. We also took part in activities so we would sit down and have a day of bingo and it was just so nice. It was really nice to socialize with those people and yeah you sort of become like a part of a family. It's really really nice and then you'll do things like wound dressings or catheter care. You will be pushing fluids. Oh my god the amount of times you have to push fluids because people don't drink and I don't know why. Nobody ever drinks in care homes or maybe it was just the one I was in. I don't know but if you were going to care home let me know but you have to go around and reminding people do you know drink your tea, drink your juice, drink your water and then a lot of them would be on a fluid balance chart as well because they're not drinking enough so then you'd have to monitor the fluid balance. A lot of them would be on nutrition as well so you'd have to sort of little bits like in between meals like extra cheese and biscuits. They might have like 46 or like the little 40 creme yoghurt that sort of build up drinks and nutrition yoghurt and then they would be on food charts as well so you'd have to document what they're eating every single day to make sure they're getting enough fluids and nutrition in every single day. You'll have a bit like the awards have as well. You'll have like your hourly care round so you go around checking that people are eating, drinking, if anybody needs to go to the toilet you can help them to go to the toilet if they need that assistance. Pressure relief is massive in care homes as well getting people up and moving and making sure they're relieving that pressure from the bottoms or if they're lying in bed it'll be the spine and actually all the bony bits in bed. So just making sure that people are being turned regularly if they're out they are in bed. Make sure people are standing, getting motivated, keeping those going. We always say you know if you don't use it you're going to lose it as perfect saying for care homes. Then you're constantly doing pressure area checks as well on patients morning, afternoon if you're taking them to bed, if they're having a rest or going to the toilet, you're constantly inspecting that skin to make sure that you're preventing any deterioration, you want to prevent that pressure soar from happening. If you're noticing as well something else that I need to mention about pressure soars, if you're noticing that it's been documented that someone's got a red blanching bottom every single day that's a bit of an issue because nobody should be having red blanching anything every single day in the same place every single day and no one's doing anything about it. If you think about red blanching, if you're sat, even me, I get it all the time. If I'm sat cross-legged if I pull my knees apart then I'll get like a little red area and that red area is gone within an hour. So if you think about someone's red blanching they shouldn't really be red blanching every single day in the same area because that should be relieved at some point. So maybe adding some more pressure relief in, some barrier creams, making sure that they're off that area for a period of time to hopefully make sure that that goes because the next thing you don't want is it goes to red non-blanching because that's the first signs of a pressure also is about to pop up. So it's just about really monitoring that and preventing any deterioration from your patients. So working in care homes as well is like I said the activity so it's all about keeping people motivated, it's all about keeping your residents, I always call them residents in care homes because that's what we always call them, they weren't patients, they were residents, that is their home, it's not your home, it's not your workplace, it is very much their home. So it is about keeping them active, it's keeping them mobile if they can, it's about that social interaction that people lose when they get to a certain age, a lot of elderly people really suffer with loneliness and it's your job working in a care home to make them feel worthwhile, to make them feel worthy again, to make them feel special, to make them feel that actually they're not alone, that they've got you and they've got the people around them and it's just I can't praise care homes enough, I absolutely love it. Like I've said in my previous logs, the elderly have my whole heart, I just love them and I can't do enough for the elderly honestly and you will get days where it's really tough, you'll get days where someone will pass away and you just think oh why why and it is very very sad and you'll get other days where you might get a resident who is really just not getting on with the day, they're really negative, they're hating on you a little bit, they might be a little bit abrupt with you but do you know what you have to think about okay just stop, don't take it personally, why could this person be like this, why is this person are they feeling lonely, is there something going on in their life, that they're sort of out reflecting to you, you need to maybe think about that and just think what can I do to make this person better, what can I do to relieve some of this abruptness or negativity in this person's life and it is very care homes, it isn't just physically demanding, it is very emotionally demanding and it's just that you will get your tough days, I can't say it's not going to be tough because there are tough days like in every single job but overall is just amazing and you're going to absolutely fall in love like I did and not only that it's where I learned, I said this in another vlog, it's where I learned my fundamentals of nursing like the six C's of nursing, the care, the courage, the commitments, communication skills, all of those sort of things I learned in a care home and it was just the perfect place to build on those skills and also assessment skills as well so you've got the fundamentals, the six C's of nursing but you've also got those assessment skills, the clinical skills, some nursing homes as well have things like IVs, you might have sutures and clips and things to remove, it depends very much where you are and what they do in the care home and last time I checked care homes to be a care assistant in a care home, it is very much minimum wage and there needs to be a lot more pay for care assistants and health care assistants unless you're working for an agency where you may get paid a bit more, that's a bit different when you're employed by a care home, it is very much minimum wage and I feel like this doesn't reflect at all the amazing things care assistants do because they're incredible, same with health care assistants on the wards, they don't get paid enough I don't think, nurses if you're going to be a nurse in a care home you will be on that pay scale, a gender for change pay scale so your start and salary should be £24,214 I think that's what it is but yeah have a look and each care home might be different so just have a look at different roles, different care homes, different pay scales, all of that jazz if that's what you want to look into because it is a care home it's not an acute setting there might be times where your patient suddenly deteriorates and you need to call the ambulance so even though if you're a nurse some care homes don't have nurses so there's nursing homes and there are residential homes, residential homes don't have their own nurses so they will have the district nurses come in and they will have ambulances, paramedics, send people to hospital, GP surgeries, all of that are involved social workers, how could I forget social workers and then you'll have nursing homes who have on-site nurses and they will do these sort of less acute, acute stuff but if it gets that bad where a person needs more acute hospitalization then they will have to call the paramedics in and they will be taken to hospital or again getting the GP out they will call the GP and they will do some home visits also within the care home they will have other services come in so they might have like a music session they'll have music activities coming in they might have somebody that does exercise classes that comes in they might have someone like the shrapidis will come in and come around and do everyone's feets they might have like a beautician that comes in that does nails and hair things like that they'll have a hairdresser coming in some places have their own hairdresser if you're fortunate they will have their own hairdresser that residents go to care homes are a little bit like wards in a way so you will have a kind of routine so you'll sort of get your patients up wash dress ready for the day they'll head down for breakfast sometimes they stay in the room for breakfast it's completely their choice and then you've got medication rounds going on during breakfast as well and you might have some activities and then you'll have sort of like a mid-morning snack and tea and coffee time things like that during the mornings and then it'll be lunch time and then after lunch again there'll be like activities going on or if people just want to relax people will just relax watch telly whatever they want to do play bingo some residents get together and play card games together things like that then they'll have like an afternoon tea session again so they'll get in them fluids in so they'll have like an afternoon tea and coffee cart come round and then it'll be sort of evening time oh and medications are like morning lunch and evening and then night sometimes and then they'll have the evening meal at five six o'clock all of the meals in care homes are cooked by the chef so they'll have their own chefs come in in a care home that i worked at we did the meals in the evening so we would do like the supper time meals and that would just be like soups and like little and sandwiches and things like that it wasn't more full on lunches they're full on lunch is usually at lunch time and residents will request their lunch so they'll have a choice they'll have a menu to choose from what they want each day and they'll pick those choices some people do it the day before some people do it on the day in the mornings think other places might cook it all together and then a bit like on the wards where they put everything together and then at the time of the meal they'll say what do you want do you want this or this and then the residents will choose then so my time in care homes has been amazing i really have loved i worked six years in care homes and i loved it it was one of the best roles i ever had it was fantastic and every day was amazing i used to wake up love going to work love seeing the residents and you build those bonds with people because like i said you become their family you become that person that contact for them and they rely on you every day to sort of be there for them and it's just it's amazing anyone that's thinking about going into a care home do it even if you just volunteer for a day just to see what it's like and what sort of things go on apply for bank shifts in a care home if you're a registered nurse go or a newly qualified nurse care homes are amazing to working as well just have a look at it look into it and yeah go just try it so that's it from me i shall see you next time everyone thank you so so much i'm so happy that i did this vlog it's been really nice to reflect back on my time in care homes as well so thank you so so much everyone for tuning in i hope it's been useful if i haven't answered the question that you want to know about care homes please comment below because i can't answer it and i'm really sorry if i haven't covered it but that is it from me and i shall see you all next time