The joy of hiring great caregivers

Hiring is often a flip of the coin. In my experience, we strive to hire great people and often they are less than desirable. But every once in a while we get lucky and hire an employee who is exceptional in character, drive, dependability and fortitude.

To be quite honest with you, I don’t even remember the day I interviewed Casey. Nothing stood out about her that would make me think twice. However, right away Casey blended in with the staff very well. She was never part of any drama and never had a complaint spoken against her. She kept to herself and was very kind to our residents.

Soon I noticed that every day at the end of her shift, Casey’s hall assignment sheet always had FYI comments for me. Maybe someone hadn’t had a BM in several days, or a resident complained of this or that. Or a skin issue needed attention. Wow. Every day Casey went out of her way to look at the ADL sheets and took note of important things that concerned the residents.

At her six-month evaluation I told Casey how awesome she was, how I appreciated how she would go above and beyond the call of duty. I bet you will all agree—these are the ones we wish we could clone! You all know which ones I’m speaking about—we all have them—a select few who come to work on time, every time. These are the employees who never call in, who go above and beyond what is expected of them. Additionally, they will work extra shifts when asked. They love our residents and the residents love them. These are also the employees who are expected to be responsible, ethical and dependable but often the ones who go unappreciated. They do what is expected of them without notice.

I realized that I hadn’t told Casey how much I appreciated her—more than just at evaluation time—every day. We all need to make extra effort to tell these select few how much we appreciate them. Remember that those who seem to not need our thanks probably deserve it the most. Thank you to all the Caseys out there!

Author Frieda Stewart, RN, is the Director of Nursing at Corn Heritage Village in Corn, Okla.; the owner and CEO of VitalAttitudes, LLC; and a public speaker who travels all across the United States.