A Lifetime of Caregiving: Donna Joubert's Story

When I started the Our Stories project in 2004, I had a question in my mind: With all of the challenges they face, and all of the other options that are out there, why do people still choose to work in direct care? One answer that seemed to come out of every story is that people become direct care workers because they are caregivers by nature, and it makes sense that they should be able to make a living from their gifts and talents just like anyone else. The reward they get in overcoming the many challenges they face every day is simply that they are able to continue to do the work they love. Most of the Our Stories participants seemed to love recounting the hundreds of quiet, everyday moments they've shared with their consumers. Sometimes it was a fleeting moment of clarity with a resident who had dementia, sometimes it was watching a client as they took steps toward becoming more independent, and sometimes it was holding someone's hand in their final hours. These moments are the building blocks of relationships they form with their clients, and those relationships are the building blocks of the profession. When direct care workers fight to improve the conditions of their job, what they are fighting for is to ensure that everyone's right to that human connection is both valued and protected.

My mother, Donna Joubert, has been a caregiver her whole life. She was younger than me when she became a CNA and today, 37 years later, she's still doing it. My mother has a strong sense of self identity as a CNA and she was, and is, very proud of what she does. She was an advocate for herself, for her clients and often for other workers throughout the years while the problems in the direct care field were growing worse, and groups like PASA were yet to be formed. Her example taught me that every life has value and that it's not acceptable for anyone to feel forgotten or alone. Empathy, compassion and commitment form the foundation for good direct care workers, and Donna has an abundance of these. She has shown that a person can make a life and a career out of caregiving, because along with the inevitable challenges will come the great rewards. For me it was her story which was the original inspiration for the Our Stories project. It's a sign of great hope that an organization like PASA exists. It gives these stories that inspire and encourage, teach us and touch our hearts, an opportunity to be told with love and heard with respect.

Jocelyn Barrett
Our Stories Project

A Different Time

My mother Helene was a CNA for three years during World War II. She took care of the soldiers that were coming home from overseas. When I was a kid, she would tell a few different stories about the men who came into the hospital. She has a smile that lights up a room, and what she loved the most was sitting there and talking with them after she had finished cleaning them up. Of course, she was single at the time, very pretty and a bit of a flirt, so I imagine that had something to do with why she liked it. Being one of the oldest daughters out of thirteen children, I was a caregiver at a very, very young age. At six and seven years old we were feeding the babies, and my mother was teaching us how to change diapers. She is a wonderful, wonderful mother and caregiver and she has always been such a big influence to me. When I was small, every year for Christmas I would ask for a doctor's kit. It had the plastic stethoscope, the needle and bandages in a little bag. I'd pretend to take care of my dolls or my brothers and sisters; it always felt so right.

I graduated from the CNA program in 1970 when I was twenty years old. I was trained in a hospital and the first job I had was in that same place. I started working third shift in a nursing home after I was married, and I stayed there for a number of years. It was just twenty beds and very simple. Everybody knew everybody. The owners were wonderful. At that time my husband worked swing shifts in a factory, and when he was on third shift, they would let me take the kids to work with me. I'd pack them up, bring them to a quiet little area with couches in it, and the girls would sleep there. I'd peek in on them when I came by.

When my children were small, I worked a few other jobs that paid better and had steadier hours, but I always kept my hand in nursing. I did private care on the side for two elderly couples; I worked for a family who had a paraplegic son who required total care. But I always loved working with the elderly the best, and when the girls were older I went back to it full time. This was 1992, I started on third in a nursing home with nearly a hundred beds, and that was a much different experience. I got moved to days pretty soon and that was the best place I ever worked in. We had a wonderful director of nurses who was very supportive. We were asked for our input regarding any changes they were going to make, and they offered us programs and in-services all the time which, for someone like me, is great because if you love your job you want to learn all that you can. That's one of the things that's tough for me now -- the respect I think we've lost as CNAs. Back when I started, it wasn't just washing and feeding and doing the ADLs with the residents. When I took the CNA class to get recertified in 2005 they had a hundred hours of classroom and fifty hours of clinicals. When I had my original training in 1970, we had five days of classroom time, and then we had six weeks of clinicals; forty hours a week right out on the floor. We had more responsibility, they trusted us more. That's one thing they've taken away from us over the years. I don't have a degree, but I have a lot of experience in this field. When I try to tell a nurse something, like having noticed that a resident is coughing or behaving in an unusual manner, getting brushed off is one of the toughest things to take.

I've been doing this for 36 years; I have taken care of hundreds of people to their dying breath. You can't tell me that a nurse who's had her degree for five years can't spare a minute to listen to what I have to say. Through experience, there are things that you will never get out of a classroom or by having a degree.

What Keeps You Going

I was at that nursing home until 1998 when I was remarried and moved farther away. I stayed there for a short while but at that point the administration had changed hands. Between the longer commute and the new administrator who was really bringing the place down, I got burnt out. I always say that your facility is only as strong as your administration. If you don't have a decent administrator, if you don't have a supportive DON, then your aides can only do so much. I took a couple of years off and only did childcare. I wasn't using my CNA at all. I loved the kids and I loved what I was doing, but actually my heart was always calling me back to the nursing. That's when I started doing home care and I loved it so much. It made me feel that I was getting a lot of respect from Visiting Nurses. They recognized my experience and appreciated it. They'd say, "OK, Donna. We know you know what you're doing and we don't have to worry about you."

It was when I was doing the homecare that I met Willi. I always think about the belief that if in all the years of work you can touch just one person -- it's worth it! With Willi I feel that she touched my heart so much more than how I touched her. When I first met her, she was a small 90-pound lady who didn't trust anybody. When I first started to go to Willi's, she would not talk to anybody, she wouldn't eat, nor take her medications at all. She just sat in her chair. She had hardly any furniture in the place, no food in the cupboards and no pictures on the walls. When you go into someone's home and there isn't a single picture anywhere, you know they have no one. At first I would just sit with her. One thing Willi had was strong faith, so I sat with her and we always started with a prayer. I told her, "I believe that God sent me here because He sees that you need some help, Willi. And I want to help you, so I think that God picked you out especially for me."

Well, she started to come around a little. She started talking. I'd bring in food for her, invite her to come into the kitchen with me, and she would eat a little. I brought over some furniture I had given to me when my father-in-law passed away. Once she opened up, we talked on and on. I learned that all her life she had been horribly abused, mentally and physically, by just about everyone except her husband. He had passed away years ago and she had no children. I showed her the pictures of my girls and my baby granddaughter and related to her what they were doing. She kept a picture of the baby in her apartment. So one day I said, "Willi, you can call me Donna," but she replied, "No, I'm not gonna call you Donna." I said, "Well, you can call me Mrs. Davis," to which she added, "No, I'm not gonna call you Mrs. Davis. I'm gonna call you Peaches." "Why do you want to call me Peaches?" I asked. And with a big beautiful smile she said, "Because I love peaches." My heart melted, and from that point on, I was always her Peaches.

When I knew I was leaving, I talked with the director and she asked me right out who I thought would be the best person to take over for me. Her name was Donna, too, and her personality was a lot like my own. She was very loving and very caring. Everyone saw how far Willi had come and they didn't want to see her backslide. All the nurses going in there, the physical therapist and all said that it was miraculous how she had gained 28 pounds since I had started there; how she took her medications and did her exercises. All she needed was someone to sit there with her and tell her that they cared about her -- and mean it. I could let her go because I knew she was in good hands, and I know that I couldn't have given her any better care because I had given her the best I had. There are a lot of Willis out there, and they are the ones who keep you going in this world and in this job.

Alzheimer's Residents: Why They Are Special

I've been living in Maine now for almost two years and I'm back to working in a nursing home. I was very happy to get a job working with the Alzheimer's residents because that's what I really love. When I was working at the facility back in Connecticut, what we ended up having in the last two years I worked there was a day program for the residents, not an Alzheimer's unit. I and another aide basically ran it. Before we started, we took some courses to learn about Alzheimer's. This was in the early nineties, so there weren't a lot of programs around like that. When I was doing this work back in the seventies and eighties we didn't know what the words "dementia" or "Alzheimer's" meant. When residents began losing their memories or their behavior changed, we labeled them as getting senile. There was this attitude of, "Well, they're old. What do you expect?" I never thought to question it; I don't think anyone did. I believe that the most fantastic thing that's developed since I started nursing is that this disease has been given a name, and we are much more educated, and we continue to learn more about giving the Alzheimer's residents the best quality of life we can. It can be such a devastating disease, not only for the residents who develop it but for their families, as well.

We listened to a lot of music and sang the old songs. We played games with them and did pet therapy a couple of times a week. That was something I always loved. We'd have a resident who didn't respond to anything we did, but if she had a cat placed in her lap, without a change of expression on her face, her hand would come up and she'd pet it. Or when we were singing an old song or have people come in to sing Christmas carols, even if only for a few minutes, something would register and smilingly they would sing the songs with us. Those were the moments that kept us going.

It's different now in the place where I'm working. The staffing situation is getting very bad. The State says that only one aide is needed for every ten residents. Well, the State obviously is just doing a head count and doesn't know what we're dealing with, especially with the Alzheimer's residents. We have twenty people on the floor but it's more like thirty because we're running constantly. Fifteen of them have tag alarms, which are hooked to their clothes, chair or bed so that we are alerted if they try to stand up. These are people who are in a lot of danger if they walk around unsupervised. It's very difficult because when you hear that alarm go off, you must run. Generally, that means somebody is standing up and should not be, and if you don't get there in time, you'll find them on the floor. You can't just say, "I'm busy with this person so they're going to have to wait until I'm finished." If you are with a resident who can't be left alone, you have to hope the other aide is free or someone may get hurt. When they say one aide for ten residents, I would like to say to them, "Why don't you come on the floor for one eight-hour shift and show us how you expect us to do this. Show us what we're doing wrong. You would think twice about it if you were giving us this ten-to-one ratio and your mother were in this facility at a time when her light would go off and I couldn't get to her so she could use the bathroom."

My faith is such a big part of who I am and what my job is. The way I always deal with things is that on my way to work every day I say a prayer and ask God to help me to keep patient, help me to be able to look at whatever situation may arise that night and be able to deal with it. I find that when I do this, it helps to keep me centered and calm and not get overwhelmed. I never leave the floor at the end of the night feeling that I was capable of more than what I had accomplished. Maybe the residents needed more, but I was unable to give them more than what I did. Even when I lose residents I really cared about, I can sit there with them and I say, "You're going to a better place. We love you and we gave you the best care we could." It's a nice feeling in a way, when I think how many people don't have that in their final hours and don't have anyone there with them. In my heart I know that there are no perfect nursing homes, but I do know that even if someone who wasn't loved or cared about comes through that door, they are in a place where there are people who do the very best they can to help them. We may fall short sometimes, but they're not alone and they're not forgotten. Not by us. For me, that's what it means to be a CNA, and it's why I can still love my job after all these years.