Opportunity to Work at a Nursing Home,

¶ … opportunity to work at a nursing home, offering my support during physical, occupational, and speech therapy sessions. These sessions offered insight into diverse types of therapy. I worked with a range of different health care workers and specialists, lending insight into how each member of the health care team coordinates their efforts and communicates with each other as well as with patients and family. One of the types of therapy sessions that I supported at the nursing home was therapy with animals. We brought in several animals to assist with therapy, including dogs, cats, and exotic creatures. Therapy Dogs International (n.d.) provided the animals and sometimes the trainer.

The seniors responded well to these therapy sessions, and I intend to support such programs in the future by perhaps providing fund raising for organizations that offer animal therapy. I am also interested more in music and art therapy after performing and providing support services in this context. Our nursing home had several art and music therapists. These therapists would come once or twice a week to spent time with the seniors. The music classes were fun for the seniors and for the therapists, who brought instruments and computers. It was interesting to see the different attitudes toward the computer music creation classes. Some of the seniors enjoyed working with the computers. Many said that they had children or grandchildren who played music on the computers, and were interested in learning. Others were more resistant to the technologies. It was very much the same for the art therapy classes that I participated in at the nursing home. The artists usually brought physical materials such as canvas, paint, papers, charcoal pencils, and clay. However, once a therapist brought a computer so that the seniors would be able to learn Microsoft Paint and also to play with their photographs. There were a few seniors who had print photographs that they wanted to put on the computer, and the art therapist showed them not just how to do this but how to make a collage and do other creative things.

I provided support in the context of aide. When the artists or musicians needed me to attend to specific individuals, I would do that. It allowed me to learn the names of all the people in the facility. I also provided institutional support, and filled out forms for the therapists. This greatly helped their procedural operations, and dealt with the bureaucratic red tape that they did not like to do themselves. The process was painless for me, and I enjoyed being able to help.

Another way I provided service to the therapists and to the institution was during the occupational therapy and physical therapy sessions, such as the ones that Brown (1999) describes. During the occupational therapy sessions, we worked with many seniors who had mobility issues or mental impairment issues related to senility, dementia, or Alzheimers disease. These individuals needed extra support, which is what I provided in terms of holding their hands, or helping them walk around. We worked on issues such as how to send their grandchildren emails, and how to remember to take their medications. There are a lot of daily medications for the seniors, and the nurses on staff needed someone to bring the medications to the seniors. Many of them would protest the medications, but I was there to help the nurses when the individual became belligerent about taking it.