Pros: went up in the company quickly, raises every 3 months, no supervision
Cons: demanding patients, long work day, short breaks or no breaks
I worked at an Adult Foster Care Home, 12 hour shifts on 3rd shift from 7:00 p.m to 7:30 a.m. As soon as I came in I would be briefed on what happened during the day and if there was any incidents with any of the patients that lived at the home. After that I would go into the medication room and count the narcotics. Then I would get each patients medications
– more... ready for them to take at the end of the day, by using the computer, triple checking that the medication I was giving them was the right one, and than putting it into a plastic cup and checking it on the computer, there were typically 10 to 12 patients in the home at each time, and they would have anywhere from 3-20 medications that they had to take. I would then call the patient into the medication room and have them take their medication and than open their mouths to make sure they swallowed them. After all the patients were done I would then do my paperwork for the medication room. Then I would help with snack, and hanging out with the patients, getting them in bed by 11pm. After 11pm another staff member and I would do deep cleaning for 3rd shift. Washing walls, cleaning cupboards, cleaning bathroom, hallways, kitchen, living room, and laundry. If a patient came out of their room needing any type of medication I would have to give it to them, examples: aspirin, narcotics, cough drops, antacid, etc. We would then bring up the food for the next days menu. Start breakfast at 5 to 5:30 am to have it done by 6 am. Get patients up, do blood sugar for diabetic patients. They would eat and then we would clean up. We had two people on 3rd shift so we would split patients and each have a certain amount that we would take care of, we would chart at the end of the shift on our specific patients and write any incident reports if anything happened during our shift. The next shift would come in and we would brief them and then whoever was in medication room would go in with me and count the narcotics and I would hand over the key. I loved my shift manager, she put me in charge of new employees and gave me lots of opportunities which I excelled at. I also had no problems with any of my coworkers, we all worked together as a team. The hardest part of the job was being worried that one of the patients would flip out and we would get hurt, I was slapped across the face, and a few other things. So we had to be on guard all the time and worried that we could get really hurt by our patients. The most enjoyable thing was that I was helping out with people who couldn't help themselves, teaching them how to live again independently. It was a very rewarding job, you got to know the patients, and learned to really care about them as if they were your family. – less