Hi, Reddit.
I notice that most of the post come from within the USA so don’t know how relevant my post will be coming from Sweden. But I found inspiration within this subreddit to stand up more for myself and the poor working conditions of summer jobs and I feel the need to share my experience because sometimes I doubt if it is me who expect too much or that I am indeed working in poor conditions. Judge for yourself (also, excuse my english. I’m not a native):
So the thing is, I am currently looking for summer jobs and desperatly don’t want to go back to elder care (but I fear I might have to if I don’t get accepted anywhere else and get very anxious about it because I do NOT want to return to the same work place). I have no problem with the work itself, it is just that the elder care is extremely understaffed in Sweden. 2 people care for around a minium of 12 people (depending on your given unit) which if given ”healthy” residents don’t need that much attention.
But the thing is (to explain) the elder care is crambed full in Sweden and only seriously sick people (some almost near dying) get in. Hence the workload is too much because these people often have many diffrent medicins and health conditions.
It is so bad and underfounded with the elder care system that they hire people like ME – young adults with no prior relevant education (I was 19 and 20 years when I worked). I do not know how it works in other countries but the seasonal substitute nursing staff here have no prior education (except that of some obligatory course where they make a one powerpoint presentation with a final test aswell as two online test and courses). With this we expected to handle narcotic drugs aswell as mental illness, violent dementia, alzheimers, seeing death and hold responsability for the medicine intake and overall health of the residents.
Normally, a substitute is paired with one ordinary staff to care for that unit but in some instances both have been substitutes and that can be scary when you are handling residents with special needs. For example, once it was me and another substitute and we were supposed to help an elderly with severe dementia. But he had a favorability with ordinary male staff and we were both female and substitutes. He was known to become violent at times and (excuse me for saying this) for his age was extremely strong and heavy so he could easily smash down both of us. He ended up hitting my coworker on the arm.
Through the two summers I have been working I have been hit, walked in diarrhea, sweared at, handled residents COVID-19 (without being informed they have it before we stand infront of their door), followed the residents to the hospital only to be with them when they are told they have terminal cancer and will die within months. Experienced the loss of residents (luckily I have not directly witnessed it). Aswell as Willingly stayed with a resident at the emergency because I knew she had bad hearing and would feel very confused and scared waiting in the emergency for nine hours overtime. Still I never got any appreciation.
I pushed a resident in a wheelchair all the way back to the elder care (not that far though 1-2 kilometers but it was a very hot day) because our taxi broke down.
I voluntarily cleaned out, restocked and order the boxes out of our storage because the boxes of newly arrived diapers and other stuff started stacking up in the resident’s corridor and it did not look nice.
Never got any appreciation from the boss for anything. The boss never seemed to have any clue on what went on within the units. One day I was sitting with a resident with alzheimers and I thought it was a good activity for her to try to draw because she had little control over her arm movements and could exercise them. Eitherway, boss came and complained to me that we had to do more. But I was already always on my feet, running between the residents hoping that there would be no accidents among the residents today.
For this work I recieved 21000 SEKa month. Including overtime and what’s called ”OB-tillägg” which is compenstation for inconvenient work hours this went up to about 24000 SEK (aprox. 2448$ a month or 2230€). Pay in mind that I pay 32% tax on this. Personally I think it is very unfair since there are way easier summer jobs that give the same or more.
Lastly, I feel sorry for the elderly residents. They are effected by this aswell.
Thank you if you read this far.