Second Term Community Externship
This term for my community externship I was situated at Broadway Pental Coastal Lodge long term care facility. This facility is a Christian based lodge and has three different floors of elderly living there. When I first started my rotations at the lodge I was extremely nervous and did not enjoy working with the residents. I afriad because of how unpredictable they can be and didn’t know how to react if they became upset with me. I was unsure if I would even be successful at this particular externship, and didn’t know if I’d be able to provide care for the elders at all.
As the term went on the I slowly began to feel more comfotable around the eldery in terms of providing treatment and communicating with them, until the day I met Larry. He is a 92 year old resident who lives on the third floor of the lodge. He helped me to understand some of the issues that the residents are faced with and a few of the diseases they may be faced with (such as dimentia).
Larry was more cognitively available than any other elderly I had provided treatment for. He told me that he was lonely and that he just wanted someone to talk to. Each time I visited him to provide dental hygiene treatment I would set aside time to just simply speak with him. I could tell that it was more important to him than the health of his teeth. I learned that he has traveled the entire world over four times and he has quite the sense of humor! After I finished his care I began to develop rapport with the rest of the eldery, if possible, before I provided treatment. It made me feel great because I could tell that most of them really did just want someone to speak to. An elderly lady even told me “it’s great to have such a nice young lady come and talk to me because I get tired of looking at old folk all day”. I actually laughed out loud, but felt great about the fact that in some way, even if it was insignificant, I was providing companionship for a short while to the elders.