The Nursing Home subculture

01/27/10
Markku Esperame

English 102

P1



The Nursing Home Subculture



The subculture I decided to investigate on will be the nursing home subculture. It is a community dedicated to provide service for old people who are sick or ill. Nursing homes take care of these old men and women and try to provide them their medical needs like a hospital but in a facility that looks like a house. People who are busy and can’t leave an old relative in the house can bring them to these nursing homes.

Nurses, nurse aids, activity personnel and cooks are the members of this subculture. Nurses with the aid of their Nurse aides help together to take care of the old people residing in a nursing home. There they bathe, feed and take care of this people. The dietary staff cooks food for them and the activity personnel provide entertainment like games and activities. All of the staffs play one role and it is for the care of these old people.

I have been in this subculture for the past two years because I work as a dietary aide and I believe that learning more about them will give me the opportunity to get a closer look in this caring community. I see how old women are being treated with care and love, I’ve seen how old women come together at this one house and live together like a family and I think that it is interesting to learn more about the residents and to get to know how these group of people feel being away from their families and also how the staff team feel when dealing with different families and people.

I want to learn more about this subculture because it’s interesting to find out how old people end up living in a nursing home. If one of my parents would grow old, I don’t think I could bring them there since I care for them so much and will worry if they would be living in a different place that I’m quite unfamiliar with. So, I would like to learn more about them so I can find answers of how families end up bringing their old parents in a nursing home like what are the usual stories?

Learning more about this subculture will give me a chance to get some scoop of medical work since I am pursuing pre-med. At times I’d see doctors pop out and roam around room to room and check each residents health condition. I think that it would be cool to interview a real doctor and get to know the things they deal with when working in a nursing home. Doctors and in-house hospice from different places come to visit us there often so hopefully I could get to talk and learn a thing or two from them.


The field site would be the place itself since I work at Star Manor of Northville. It will be easier for me to interview the people because all of them stay and work there from time to time. The information that I will be sharing will of course first be approved by the directors of nurse because I cant just give out information when there is a privacy law for the facility. I may or may not gather a lot of information because of this confidentiality but I’ll try my best to get information that is good to share to readers.