Reflection:
For my Honors Practicum, I worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) at Birchwood Cottages, an assisted living facility that specializes in memory care. Working strictly with residents who struggle with dementia or Alzheimer’s, I learned just how important understanding personal beliefs and values are to support a meaningful life. These residents clearly lack memory; however, it is their memories that make them feel most comforted and happy. This is something I did not really expect walking into a memory care setting. The residents still hold core beliefs about their life values and the things that mean the most to them. I expected that most of them would not remember anything about their early lives, but I was wrong because it turns out that the residents love to talk about their culture and family traditions. Being able to understand independent culture allows the creativity of the care team to support residents by recreating culture for independent resident benefits. A lot of my residents share similar cultural values as mine, and a lot of them have values that I do not know anything about. I am trained in my profession to not influence my residents with my beliefs, however, I found sharing cultural experiences allowed the residents to open up to me about their beliefs which allowed me to learn about the differences between other cultures and some important details that the resident might care about, such as the way holidays are celebrated. I found it interesting to witness how holidays were celebrated in the building despite the wide range of cultural differences. Christmas was celebrated very traditionally, as anyone with a Christian background would. Other religious holidays that occur during December were not observed at all. There weren’t any audible objections to how the holiday was celebrated, but it felt very biased to me. The residents have memory difficulties and cannot advocate for themselves about how they want to celebrate. After interviewing several my residents, I could tell that culture and religion is incredibly important to each of them. They all practice different religions, but they all have the same significance because they clearly had more memory about their culture than anything else. I continued to ask all my residents about what traditions they had for holidays or how they would typically celebrate their culture. These are things I continuously inquired about throughout the year. My goal was to find out things unique to each independent culture in hopes of recreating the same atmosphere in our facility. I wanted each person, whether they are aware or not, to feel culturally at home in our assisted living facility by incorporating their cultural traditions. Asking different questions that infer information about family, education, and travel preferences gave me great information about personal values and cultural preferences.
​
All three of the residents I interviewed told me that their most memorable moment of life was either being in love or getting married. This information reaffirmed the idea that people do not like to be alone, and even more, what we as caregivers can do to make the residents feel loved will improve their quality of care and life in assisted living. I had a good understanding of family dynamics and what things were most important to my residents. My view and understanding of different cultures widened tremendously just by asking my residents questions about their lives.
As part of my practicum, my goal was to be able to utilize my knowledge of sign language to communicate with my residents that are hard of hearing. Frankly, this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I did not plan on working in a memory care setting, so teaching those I cared for a new language was out of the question. I was, however, able to utilize my understanding of the importance of nonverbal communication to understand my residents using improper aspects of sign language. We used hand gestures back and forth to signal to residents from afar when they could not hear. I also used similar tactics with my coworkers to communicate privately. All my nontraditional practice of ASL strengthened my awareness of ASL culture and its importance for all aspects of life and not just communication. I recently started working with a newer resident that is fully deaf. This resident struggles to be understood and does not understand us well. I can only imagine how vulnerable and terrifying that would be. I am learning how to use my knowledge of ASL to communicate more effectively. Since, I have learned that bigger more general communication is more important than trying to speak little details about what is going on. General understanding back and forth between residents and those on their care team is so important to their quality of life. I expect as I continue to work in this healthcare setting, I will experience numerous other cultural preferences that patients carry with them. So far, this practicum has taught me how to respect and understand cultural differences, inquire about personal values, and communicate appropriately according to the setting. All of these experiences have allowed my fulfillment of Global Citizenship competencies levels 2 and 3 for all sublevels.​
​