Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Working With Older Adults

Working in this community has taught me things about myself I did not know I can accomplish as well as different mental health diagnoses. I have always wanted to work in a setting with older adults but I could not pin point exactly what I wanted to specialize in. My experience of this summer working with older adults who have dementia is a one in a life time experience. My development of knowledge has expanded beyond my measures with the experience I have experienced within this community.

To begin with, in the process of developing a program that targets memory preferably short term, life satisfaction and quality of life was difficult. Planning a program from scratch to help individuals reach goals and to identify unmet needs was problematic

for me. As time passed, I grew to know the importance of a needs assessment. A needs assessment determines and address needs, gaps or wants in the community. Not having the experience in completing this task really challenged me to do the best I can. I felt I had the community depending on me to advocate for the services that are not being provided to meet their needs. Now knowing the impact, a needs assessment can do to help improve overall well-being and life satisfaction is a powerful tool to make life changes. It is important to gather knowledge about the community to determine what has been done, what worked and what new things can be incorporated to make a change. Understanding the background is important to know what type of community I am interacting with. Gathering data to analyze the needs, concerns and wants in the community is important because it shows what is missing to meet the needs as well as determine what can and cannot be done.
What I’ve learned about myself that I was not aware of before was the great motivation I put forth a task I did not have experience in. I knew I had determination and motivation but not as much as I thought I had. This experience honestly taught me to never give up on task or people who are depending on me. I felt in this situation I am their voice. To myself I said, “Who will advocate what they will need like I can” “who will understand what it feels like to not have anything” and “this community really needs me”. All of these statements gave me the boost I needed to keep going when I felt like giving up every day. The new skills I feel I acquired through this experience is being a stronger leader and developing empathy. These skills allowed me to humble myself to understand other situations in order to take action to help individuals in identifying their needs.
Areas I feel that are still challenging for me is organization skills and guidance. I feel if I had more time or a notice ahead of time I could have been prepared. I will ensure future development for the second half of the summer semester from these problematic areas by asking for clear understanding as well as better time management to be well organized. In life there will be curve balls that come out of nowhere, but breaking down the task into steps or asking for help will help with a better outcome.