From working in a nursing home to providing in-home services, Yi Lu-ping (易露萍), a nurse who has been working for the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation (GSWF) for more than 16 years, has taken care of many patients, and with love and patience, she has achieved “zero pressure injuries,” winning the trust of their family members.
“My job is not only to take care of bedridden critically ill patients, but also to provide mental support to their family, which is my greatest achievement after working so many years,” Yi said.
Having graduated from Fooyin University’s junior-college program, Yi, 45, said that seeing the feeling of powerlessness and difficulties faced by her family members when they took care of her ill grandmother motivated her to pursue a career in long-term care.
Photo courtesy of the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation
She started working at a military hospital, then began working at a nursing home to learn long-term care skills, before joining the GSWF.
Long-term care courses were not very popular when she was in school, so she had to study part-time at a two-year junior college while simultaneously working and attending courses held by the Long-Term Care Association to learn more, Yi said.
Although she used to be short-tempered, she gradually learned to become more stable and steady at the job, as it requires a lot of love, patience and passion, Yi said.
People the GSWF serves are confined to their beds and critically ill, also known as people in a vegetative state, and the working environment is different from hospitals or long-term care facilities, she said.
Nurses at the GSWF look after patients with great care, giving them medicine, changing their clothes and sometimes performing manual disimpaction, she said, adding that this results in patients being free from pressure injuries, bedsores and scabies, and family members fully trust them.
She has seen many difficult family situations, including an elderly man with prostate cancer who had to take care of his wife who is confined to her bed, Yi said.
When a care worker accidentally dislocated the wife’s arm, she taught the carer how to safely turn the woman with a bath towel, she added.
In another case, a patient was confined to his bed after a stroke, but his wife and two children had mental disorders, so she found them eating moldy food, Yi said, adding that she believes some families are urgently in need of more resources and services.
Aside from taking care of bedridden and critically ill patients, she also provides mental support to their family members, Yi said.
Yi said she took care of a woman with terminal cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis who seemed to have been fasting and unwilling to receive any treatment.
When she visited the woman’s home, she found her in a coma due to low blood pressure, Yi said.
She did not want the patient to die of hunger, so she spoke softly to the woman and her daughter, who was crying, and later saved the patient by calling 119, she said.
The woman died, but the intervention allowed her family members to have one more week to bond with each other and prepare themselves, Yi added.
“Having done this [providing mental support for the family members] has been my greatest achievement in working for many years,” she said.
As she has been providing in-home nursing services for five years, she travels to many places, and many of the people she takes care of can be admitted to nursing homes, but their family members have limited knowledge about how to take care of them, Yi said.
Hopefully, people would pay more attention to their community, and call 119 if they notice a potential emergency case, so that professionals can intervene and prevent long-term care tragedies, Yi added.
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