Why work in the skilled nursing setting?
Whether you have been in nursing school for years or nursing assistant school for a few months, now that you have graduated, it is time to focus on your career options and what setting will be the best fit for your career.
First and foremost, Palm Garden Healthcare would like to congratulate you on your graduation and applaud you for pursuing a career in healthcare! We specialize in the skilled nursing/long-term care settings and have 14 skilled nursing center locations and one Assisted living center in the State of Florida. We also offer home health services in each of the communities we serve as well as in-patient and out-patient therapy services!
You may wonder…why skilled nursing or long-term care? We at Palm Garden Healthcare would like to share with you just some of the benefits this setting has to offer your nursing career.
First, the aging population in the United States that is currently around 65,000 and is looking to double to 83.7 million by the year of 2050. Due to this increase in the aging population, the need for healthcare workers will create an even greater demand for nurses and nursing assistants! Secondly, working in a nursing home means that you get to work with an interdisciplinary team. Long-term care residents not only need superior nursing care, but they also utilize physical, occupational and speech therapy, therefore you will play an important role by forming a plan of care for your resident along with those interdisciplinary teams. Next, length of stay is usually longer for nursing home residents versus patients in a hospital, for example, which will give you the opportunity to get to know your residents, know their conditions better, their likes and dislikes, which will allow you to care for the entire resident because you know them better.
Additional benefits of working in a nursing home are: sharper pharmacology skills, you get a variety of experience with varied diagnosis, and it is less physically demanding although you will be on your feet more often.
Along with advantages, there are always disadvantages to working in a nursing home and we felt it was important to list those as well: you will get attached to your patients (if the resident’s health declines, it can be heartbreaking to the healthcare professional). There are a lot of misconceptions about working in nursing homes and they generally get a bad rap, even if you’re working in the most wonderful nursing home. Lastly, your skills are more concentrated, and you will not get as much acute medical knowledge because it is a more low-intensity environment.
Why Palm Garden?
At Palm Garden Healthcare, we not only provide superior care to our residents as well as their families, but we are different than other long-term care providers because we collect life story details on each of our residents; we get to know our potential guest as individuals. We learn every detail, large and small on each resident, then we tell our team members back at the center, so they can welcome our guests as family members, not just patients. “Welcome…. We’ve been expecting you” is part of the Palm Garden way and says so much more than “hey, we knew you were coming”. When it is done right it says we know you as a person, we recognize you are special and we know how to take excellent care of you.
We do this for every guest, every resident, every family member – every time! Think of how special you feel at Starbucks when they recognize us as a return customer, remember our names and what we usually like to order. Sometimes it is the small details that make someone feel truly important and recognized.
Other details that make Palm Garden Healthcare stand out in the industry are our beautiful state of the art centers, our comprehensive full-time benefits package to include tuition reimbursement, opportunities for new graduates as well as advancement within the organization and the opportunity to offer you a career and not just a place to go to work.
All these details make Palm Garden Healthcare truly unique, special and elite!
Check out our exciting employment opportunities at: www.palmgarden.com/careers.
We Are Palm Garden!
References:
Ericksen, Kristina. (2016, February). The Beginner’s Guide to Working in a Nursing Home. Retrieved from https: //www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/nursing/blog/guide-to-working-in-a-nursing-home/
L. Neumann, VP Service and Relationship Development, Palm Garden (personal communication, September 10, 2018).