Hello my name is Heather. At the age of 17 one of my first jobs was working in a nursing home in Regina Saskatchewan. It was during the summer months so I was able to work full time and it was the night shift. A lot of people think there is nothing to do on this shift, but it is here where I learned there is more to do than just sit around and answer the bells of a patient . The rounds consisted of every 2 hours changing bedding of patients that were incontinent, giving medication, cleaning bed sores and putting more ointment on them, turning them in bed so that they would not get bed sores, keeping them hydrated with water and making sure they were comfortable. In my last year of school my father was transferred to Alberta . Not far from where we lived there was a nursing home in walking distance. I applied to work there and landed a job working with 6 Mentally Handicapped children on a part time basis . My duties consisted of giving baths, a little of physio, giving them their daily or nightly medication, grooming and feeding them. After a year I moved back to Regina and got married and started a family of my own. Work brought us back to Alberta for my husband and I continued raising our two daughters for the next three years. Money started to get tight and it was time for me to look for a job. I landed a job with Alberta Government Telephones as a Telephone Operator and enjoyed it very much. So much that I stayed with the company for 25 years. Not as a telephone operator but I moved on to the print side of the company where they make all of the phone books for the whole province. My role was in Customer Service handling all the calls that came into the advertising of the Yellow Pages. It was very stressful at times but a very good job and rewarded me well throughout the years. YPG (Yellow Page Group) bought them out and everything had moved to BC, hence we were all out of a job. Since then I have had jobs working in restaurants and a few small companies, but I keep coming back to looking after the elderly. I have worked for Home instead and did a private job for an elderly lady and I miss this kind of work. I sometimes feel that the elderly don't receive the special care that they deserve and that is why I want to get back into the profession. We need more love and patience in the world.

• Education: High school
Skills
• Meal preparations
• Medication
• Personal care (bath, toilet)
• Transfers
• Use of wheelchair
• Nursing care
Specific Skills
• Acute illness
• Physical disability
• Mental health illness
• Memory loss / dementia
• Vision loss
• Hearing loss