Placements: Week One - He Didn't Even Know My Name

Week one's in the books, and nobody threw a parade. Nobody said "great job," nobody said much of anything, which, I suspect is the whole point of the exercise.

Our lecturer introduced me to a senior staff member, who in turn handed me off to a man who's been doing this work since before it was fashionable to talk about "dignity in care", back when it just meant showing up and doing the job right, every day, without an audience.

No tour, no warm-up. First hour, first task: bed bath. Sink or swim, and he wasn't lending a hand either way.

That set the tempo for the week. 6.30am starts, three or four rounds a shift - showers, bed baths, sponge baths, incontinence changes, toileting, grooming, dressing - followed by ad hoc work. The unglamorous, "not photogenic" stuff nobody puts in the brochure. He's run it so many times it's stopped being a task list and turned into something closer to muscle memory... brisk, economical, not a wasted motion in the room. And yet never rough. Never rushed at the person. You could clock the difference in how the residents spoke to him, not the tone you use with staff, the tone you use with someone you actually trust to touch you when you're at your most exposed.

Teaching-wise, the man ran a tight ship. "Pretend I'm not here. What would you do next?" And the second I started narrating instead of moving, "I'm not here, remember? Do what you'll do."

No hand-holding, no gold stars. Just a flat nod when I got it right, or a correction, short and dry, when I didn't. Took me most of the week to understand the silence was the review. No news was good news. If he wasn't stopping you, you'd passed.

Getting quietly dismantled and rebuilt by someone that good at the job... not a bad way to spend a week. Kind of an honour, actually, even if he'd never say so himself.

Breaks were their own strange little island. Not that I was fighting for a seat in the break room...

Didn't fit in there, didn't try to.

I'd take a short walk instead. Sometimes I'd cross paths with a colleague scattered somewhere else on the grounds, grab a coffee, put in some quality time doomscrolling on a phone that suddenly felt like the only familiar object in the building.

Somewhere in there I'd also chat to the RN on duty... extremely busy, always, permanently mid-task... for the thirty seconds it took to get a signature on the attendance sheet. To be fair, I did try to make connections...

Small transaction, big consequence... no signature, no proof you were ever there.

The rest of the downtime went into the placements booklets. The ones that decide whether you limped through this or landed on your feet. Good news... the first four sections, all support-work basics, I tore through. Had a hell of a buddy/teacher, so that tracks.

Then I hit a wall. Two sections left unchecked: two residents with dementia, two in palliative care... Didn't have either in my section of the building. Although, the RN on duty on Friday told me that most residents had some form of dementia diagnosis. She even recommended some residents to speak to.

Hint: Never underestimate the power of rapport.

Friday sorted that out. My colleague and I, same building, different corners of the same floor got our marching orders: High Care floors from Monday. Her on the first. Me to the third.

We got a tour.

High care was different, entirely. Fourteen, fifteen residents. But the headcount lied about the actual weight of the room. Fewer staff to match, which is its own kind of math problem when a chunk of those residents are non-verbal, or aggro on a bad hour, or somewhere past the point where they recognise the person feeding them.

My role shrank accordingly. Less doing, more watching.

Observe. Take notes. Assist those already doing the work. You learn fast that on this floor, doing without knowing gets someone hurt...

It was quieter, too, in a way that took some getting used to. Not peaceful, exactly. Just muted. The residents here were scattered across the far end of the timeline... some deep into dementia, past conversation, communicating in sounds and reflexes instead of words. Others in palliative care, past treatment, into the business of simply being kept comfortable. A couple somewhere in between, having good days and bad ones depending on the hour you caught them.

And the staff carried that weight too... some clearly hardened to it after years in the job, all of them doing a kind of emotional labour that doesn't show up anywhere in the booklet I'm meant to be filling out.

Oh wait... It's probably in the "Reflections" booklet...

You don't get a training module for that part. You just stand there, watch, and try to absorb it without flinching. Soon, we might be doing the work...

Back on my previous floor, the RN's office.

I told my buddy of my transfer. He was happy for me. He said,

You're a good bloke. You're very good at this. I wish you all the best.

Then, another colleague walked in and he told her,

"Look, he's moving to the 3rd floor on Monday!"

"Who?"

He turned to me and said,

"What's your name again?"

We worked well together, the teacher and the student and he didn't know my name... And I'm not even offended.

It was not "Naveen" that was printed on the TAFE ID pinned on my tshirt. It was my full name, nearly longer than my home address... go figure. 🤣