Date sent: Tue, 11 May 1999 22:49:22 -0400 From: "Susan F. Peterson" To: johnny at charm.net Subject: Re: The worst job in the world. Send reply to: johnny at charm.net When I was in nursing school I had to take Developmental Psychology. My professor said that the closer a job required you to work with people, the lower paid it is. And in most cases, the lower status. Probably the most important job, with the lowest pay and the actual (as opposed to pretended) status is mother. Since that was my job for many years, the pay of a nurses aide seemed fine to me-I was proud to be making money. I remember I bought two things I really wanted with my pay-a secondhand rototiller and a garden cart, and I was very proud of them. My status had been low for so long that the low status of a nurses aide did not bother me very often. What did bother me was that I got used to the environment of the nursing home and started applying my intelligence -and my compassion-to how things were done, I had ideas about how to make things better and I had no power to change anything,,,not even to make suggestions. Suggestions from nurses aides were not welcome in the nursing home where I worked. I sometimes got something done by talking to family members "You know, if you talk to occupational therapy, they would probably get your wife some special utensils and cups that she could hold even with her severly arthritic hands.." That one worked. "You know, your brother really needs to communicate even though he can't talk. There are many ways that people who have had strokes can communicate..if you insist, speech therapy should be able to get him something...there are even computers that talk when you type..." That was not so successful, speech therapy wasn't interested in anything but swallowing evals. The man brought in a typewriter for his brother, and he could type on it, slowly...but no one ever wanted to set him up with it..and then he got a decub (bedsore) on his butt and was not allowed to sit up anyway... Many of us, when we are old and helpless, will be in nursing homes. And the people who will most influence our quality of life are these same nurses aides who are paid so little and get no respect. Will they toilet us when we need to go? Will they let us sit in our preferred comfortable chair until almost time for dinner and then transfer us into the wheelchair, or will they make us get up directly into the wheelchair because it is most convenient for them? Will they position us so we can type if we can't talk? If we have an alphabet board because we can't talk, and have to point at letters with a light taped to our eyeglasses, will they wait with us as we spell out "I am crying because I'll never be able to hug my wife again." ( I was actually a nurse in a head trauma rehab center when I did that, and endured snide comments about how long it took to do my medpass, because I waited to "hear" this comment. He had been watching a movie in which a soldier comes down the ramp out of an airplane and hugs his wife.) If they do these things for us it will be at a cost to them in efficiency in doing their job. Nobody will praise them for it, and in fact, their coworkers will be angry at them for slowing things down. The job of nurse's aide had an innate dignity to it, and satisfactions which were not monetary or status. One got to make people's lives just a little bit less miserable. So why didn't I stay doing that? Well, I wanted to use my intelligence, and I wanted more money and days off and things like that. Still, if I could do that job surrounded by other intelligent caring people, and earn a decent living at it, and be allowed to try things to make people's lives better, I'd rather do that than what I do now. I think I thought that being a nurse would be that, but it was mostly pill pushing and paperwork, with a few shining moments...many fewer than as an aide. It really bears thinking about that many of us will wind up in a position in which we are very dependent upon people from close to the lowest strata of society, people who are ill paid, not respected for their work. If anybody can think of a way to change this situation I would like to hear it...and like to see it happen. Susan F. Peterson