I am currently a Care Assistant in a Nursing Home in England, and what happens behind the closed doors sometimes I am disgusted with! We have 60 rooms, 3 of them are suitable for couple, the rest are for those on their own. We are currently having an extension built onto the home, a conservatory, and 16 new rooms, and for us staff that are working there at the moment, we feel that it's going to be too much work for us to fit in during the course of the day. In the mornings we have 10 members of staff to cover both floors, and the evenings we are cut down to 7.

All we are concerned about now is whether we are going to have enough staff and time to manage over 70 residents once the new extension is complete. The situation now is bad enough, most days we have someone calling in sick with a bad back or pulled muscles due to the amount of work we have to struggle with in the mornings. Most of our residents recently have to be hoisted due to ill health or are just generally too heavy to move without help. For us staff, it sometimes can get very stressful, especially with the number of residents we have to see in the morning to make sure they are washed and dressed for the day.

Our main problem at work is the lack of staff we have in the evening when it comes to the resident's bedtime. What we do now is split up, 3 upstairs, 3 downstairs and one person on their own to check on those who are independent.
The other concern for me at the moment is the lack of teamwork, I have spent quite a few occasions working on my own whilst everyone else is on break, and no one seems to want to help you, they prefer to watch you struggle instead.

At the end of the day, I am not too pleased with the way that the residents get treated sometimes, especially those who can't care for themselves. I've had a few residents actually telling me that they wished they were never there, due to certain individuals who couldn't care less. I am glad to say that I'm one of those people with a kind heart, and will sit with them during times when they feel no one is listening. I care an awful lot for the residents at the home, sometimes I feel sorry for them having to put up with it.

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