Book- retire

( Place on page 315 after para 2 "leave it all behind).

To be honest, if my health wasn't concerned, I may have elected to retire regardless. Why? Nursing home social work was changing. Before, the emphasis was the resident. Getting to know the residents you cared for was of the utmost importance. How can you do a proper assessment, care plan or even write a progress note if you have no clue about your residents?

At the end, we were required to spend much more time chained to our desk, doing computer work. Going back to my days at Penn, the computer wasn't my niche. People were. That's why I left the machines behind and found social work in the first place.

Numbers and machines were gradually taking the place of people. Many of my co-workers were much more technical and computer savvy than I was. They could zip through an assessment in no time. Me? I was older and old-school.  I struggled , as usual, which made time at my desk seem even longer and more agonizing.

Back in the good old days I would visit a resident for twenty minutes, then whip out a note in his or her chart in only a few minutes. With pen and paper. Now it seemed the computer ruled and the resident came second and the time requirements were reversed.

I knew things had changed forever and for the worst when my streak of visiting each of my residents on my unit every single day ended toward the end of my social work career. And it was all because of machines. Progress notes, care plans, assessments- everything was now being documented in computers. It made the job faster and more efficient but that didn't always mean things were better.

When I went home that particular afternoon, not checking in on all 50 of my residents, as was my daily custom, I knew things had changed. My life  and my career had come full circle. The simple ways of my early social work days were fading, with a new, faster-paced, more impersonal way of  doing our job being thrust upon us.

Things would never be the same again.