“Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it” – Stephen Hawking.

Have you ever had a job that you went to everyday and it felt like you had no purpose? You woke up at six o’clock every morning and drove to the office just to feel like you had no reason to be there? At Plan A, every day counts. There isn’t a single day that I’ve come to the office and thought “Wow…I should have stayed in bed today”. With Plan A, there is so much purpose.

‘Working short-staffed’ is a term that I hear used too often when discussing long-term care. The Personal Support staff have a load of residents to bathe, get dressed, feed, provide companionship for and complete it all at the highest quality. The number of residents on their case load all depends on who decides to show up to work that day. Oh! And all of this has to be done for all of those residents within an eight-hour shift. The Registered Staff are expected to provide medication for over thirty residents (often many more), take charge of the facility, supervise and assist the PSWs, respond to crisis situations, such as codes or falls, provide feedback to family members when requested, submit admissions and discharges…and the list doesn’t end there. You can see how much more difficult their jobs become when even one employee decides to call in sick.

You’re probably wondering, “Yeah, I get it… but where is she going with this?”

Plan A is here to be the change that the long-term care sector has needed for so long. When I first started at Plan A, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what ‘be the change’ meant. Now, after hearing stories from the candidates that I interview and discussing incidents’ with our staff that occur within the facilities during their shifts, I have a much clearer picture of what it is that I’m meant to do. I have a purpose here at Plan A and the purpose has never been as clear to me as it is now. We have all experienced poor treatment from the healthcare system in one way or another; whether it involved waiting six hours to see a doctor or being treated as a number rather than a person. The stories that we hear usually involve our friends and families’ experiences, but what about those living in long-term care facilities? They have to live with that treatment on a daily basis. They often go days without baths and are rushed to complete tasks that we are fortunate enough to have the ability to do on our own. Having the opportunity to make a difference in the quality of care that the elderly receive, whether it be directly or indirectly, is the most rewarding feeling.

What I’m trying to say is, if you don’t feel like you have a purpose in what you spend the majority of your life doing, why do it at all? Find a job that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. Find a job that allows you to make a difference. Find a job that makes you feel like you have a purpose.