Have you recently hit a glass ceiling in your career as an elderly carer? If you’re to one day unlock your full professional potential, it’s imperative that you smash through this invisible barrier — pronto! You aren’t going to reach the pinnacle of the caring field if you remain rooted in the same position for too long, which is why you must constantly be looking for ways to push yourself forward.
Want to find out what you must do to take your career in elderly care to the next level? If so, be sure to read on.
Hone your caring capabilities
Your unique qualities will have a profound impact on your day-to-day performance as a carer. Quite simply, if you wish to provide your elderly patients with the care they require to retain a good quality of life, it’s imperative that you cultivate a number of all-important skills. Here are six crucial caring capabilities that you should seek to hone:
1. Patience
2. The ability to remain calm in stressful/pressure situations
3. Teamwork and work collaboration
4. Tech proficiency
6. Empathy, sensitivity, and understanding
Specialize in a niche area
The clamor for increased elderly assistance is growing bigger by the year, and this burgeoning demand isn’t set to stop any time soon. By 2035, it is projected that there will be over 78 million people aged 65 and over living in the U.S., which means that the call for carers is well and truly set to intensify.
Of course, this enhanced demand is going to result in more and more people entering the elderly care sector. This means that you are going to face stiff competition whenever you apply for new roles, which in turn will make it harder for you to climb your chosen career ladder. Fear not, however, as this doesn’t necessarily have to kibosh your professional growth. There are a number of things that you can do to stand out from the crowd in your field, specializing in a niche area being one of the most effective routes that you can take in this instance. Once you embark down a specific caring pathway, you will have the capacity to forge an authoritative name for yourself in that particular sector. If you work hard enough, this will help you to build your personal brand and, in turn, aid you in your bid to differentiate yourself from the competing pack.
With the right expertise, experience, and training, you have the capacity to specialize in a number of different niche elderly care areas. Some of these areas include:
1. Dementia care
2. Stroke management
3. Supporting patients with learning disabilities
4. Care home support
6. Long-term care
Align yourself with a mentor
If you’re serious about unlocking your full potential as an elderly carer, you need to learn as many tricks of the trade as you possibly can. Not only will this help you to provide better care to a wider range of patients, but it will also aid you in your bid to stay on top of your administrative workflow. Ultimately, this will help you excel in all the different areas of your job, which will stand you in good stead when you start applying for senior roles in your niche sector.
Over time, you will learn the tricks of the elderly care trade by simply immersing yourself in this industry on a day-to-day basis. If you want to speed up this learning process, however, you should seriously consider aligning yourself with a mentor. With a tutoring figure by your side, you will have the capacity to delve deeper into the many intricacies and nuances of your field. Your supervisor will grant you access to a wide range of learning content, and this content will help you to garner a better understanding of what is expected from you in your role as a carer.
To ensure that you take full advantage of your mentor’s support and guidance, you must actively listen to everything he or she has to say. Even offhand comments that they make could be filled with invaluable insights into your field, which is why you should provide your supervisor with your undivided attention at all times. Once you soak in the stories that your mentor shares with you, you will be much more likely to avoid the same problems they faced in their own career. Using their past experiences as an industry example, you will then have the capacity to optimize the professional decisions that you make in the future.
Aim for a senior position
A senior position in the field of elderly care is something that you should aspire to attain if you’re serious about unlocking your full caring potential. In this position, you will be tasked with running an entire care operation. You will supervise a team of care assistants, you will create care plans, and you will train new staff members, with your overarching goal being to create a caring environment that actively improves the daily lives of your patients.
Here are a few of the other day-to-day duties that you will face in your role as a senior carer:
1. Monitoring patient vital signs (i.e. blood pressure and heart rate) over a sustained period of time
2. Completing patient medication and treatment records
3. Developing engaging activities for service users
4. Being the point of contact for your patients’ families and next of kin
5. Attending and chairing team meetings with other service managers
6. Providing emergency shift cover as and when it is required
Open your own RCFE
If operating in a senior position is simply not enough for you, there’s one more step that you can take in your quest to maximize your professional potential: opening your own Residential Care Facility for the Elderly. Should you take this difficult yet highly rewarding route in your career, you will be afforded complete control over the type and level of care that you provide. This will allow you to follow your specific caring passions, it will allow you to build on your niche expertise, and, most importantly of all, it will allow you to provide an optimized level of care to the people that need it most.
Make no mistake about it; opening an RCFE is not for the faint-hearted. Your talent and passion for caring will only get you so far in this entrepreneurial endeavor — if you’re to succeed in this venture, it’s absolutely essential that you study the business side of the care industry. What makes a good RCFE? First and foremost, you need to ensure that there is at least one qualified administrator on your team. With this type of certified expert on your workforce, you will have the legal capacity to provide a professional care service.
Other important elements of RCFE ownership that you must consider include:
1. Securing a physical plant and inspecting it for fire hazards
2. Marketing your facility to ensure that you meet your residential benchmarks
3. Hiring staff members willing to embrace your vision for optimized elderly care
Do you want to provide an amazing elderly care service over a sustained period of time? Are you determined to reach your full potential as a carer? If you’re to achieve these career objectives, it’s imperative that you put the advice and guidance laid out above into practice, as it can help you better achieve your goals for the future.
