I've noticed this, too. It's gotta be a little weird to be serving someone in a retirement home when that resident is younger than you. Conversely, it's got to be a little strange having an elder be your caretaker. I have a hard enough time allowing an older person to do something for me in a retail setting. I know a few who are there for the same reasons we all worked...they need the job to survive. I understand that everyone is in a different place in their lives. but the social implications are so obvious that I've wondered why retirement homes would place older workers in highly visible positions. It would make me feel uncomfortable (almost guilty) if I were a resident.
These times are difficult for not only we residents but also for the employees that serve us . They are doing a outstanding job with difficult meal preparation and individual resident needs and attention.
Lon, you are fortunate to have good people there. Be sure to let them know that you appreciate them. A word of appreciation means a lot.
At times that I have been in hospital and now living in Assisted Living I am impressed with the quality and care of treatment provided by both male and female Filipinos.
I've yet to have bad care from a nurse regardless of nationality, based on my few interactions with them. The few times I've required anything major, I always seek out the "inside scoop" from a nurse on which doctors to pursue and which to avoid. I've been going through some stuff lately where an appointment with an LPN finally got me on the path to discovering what's going on, after a couple of years struggling with arrogant doctors. I think that nurses are like pharmacists...a chunk of what they do is to cover for doctors, to the massive benefit of us all. Regarding nationality: I assume your depth of interaction with Filipinos is because of where you have traveled and lived. I've liked the few Filipinos that I've met, though it's not been many here on the east coast of the United States. I feel bad for the populace in the Philippines. Their politicians suck worse than ours, they have a real terrorism problem on the island (the southern part, I believe, likely enabled by the political corruption but the people seem to be nice. I think as a culture they still carry a sense of gratitude to America for our military role there. That may spill over into their relationships with individual Americans.
Filipino Registered Nurses must have a Bachelors degree and their cultural proclivity of caring for the sick and elderly is well known. Germany right now is advertising for thousands of Filipino Nurses.
THERE'S an interesting subject I've not heard of in quite a while. I recall when there was an uproar over developed nations bleeding off healthcare workers from the rest of the world (I believe the issue was African nurses at the time.) I bet that was every bit of 25-30 years ago. Like everything else, our media has a short attention span.
Registered nurses in the U.S. must have a bachelor's degree and preferably a master's in order to obtain a decent paying job. The care in the U.S. is usually at the hands of nurse's assistants or care managers. The nurses themselves are the givers of medication, do treatments, I.V.'s and many other technical objectives. They are responsible for most of the on the job teaching as well. Most foreign nurses are not qualified in the required fields, so they too, are involved in the direct hands on care of a patient today. Doctors diagnose and prescribe, while nurse cure.