Nursing home work is demanding, dangerous and often low-paying

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Nursing home work is demanding, dangerous and often low-paying

Friday, April 28, 2000

By HEATH FOSTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Sudara Asavakul's day at Providence-Mount St. Vincent Nursing Home in West Seattle starts at 6 a.m., and for the next 8-1/2 hours, this petite, self-possessed woman is moving almost constantly.

Asavakul is a certified nursing assistant in what is considered one of best nursing homes in the country, which means she has responsibility for the care and feeding of seven patients at the most.

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Aides at other nursing homes in the state with tighter budgets and lower standards report having to care for more than twice as many residents on hectic day shifts. But seven is more than enough to keep Asavakul's hands full.

One of the first residents she helps to rise is 46-year-old Maureen Romano, who was brain-damaged in a hiking accident in the rugged Lake Serene area near Index nearly 18 years ago. Romano can't walk and struggles with her short-term memory. Today, she is asking over and over again about a missing bra.

Asavakul promises to track it down as she takes away the pad that caught Romano's urine and feces during the night and washes her pale body clean. She dresses her in red sweat pants and a pink-and-gray striped shirt Romano picks out. Then, cinching a brace around her hips, the 5-foot-tall, 100-pound Asavakul expertly pivots Romano from her bed into her wheelchair.

"You've got to have a strong back to work in a nursing home," she says.

Next, she hurries to the room of 87-year-old Lillian Reeder, a frail woman who taught elementary school in Seattle for 28 years. Asavakul was a teacher in Thailand before she immigrated to the United States and clearly has a soft spot for Reeder.

Sudara Asavakul, an aide at Providence-Mount St. Vincent Nursing Home, is quite close to Lillian Reeder, 87. "You make my day," Sudara tells her. "I love you," Lillian says. "I love you, too," the aide replies.Paul Joseph Brown/P-I

"Lillian is very sweet, very gentle," Asavakul says after delivering her a breakfast tray.

The faces change, but the tasks don't.

"I do it because I like talking to the residents," Asavakul said. "They have so many stories to tell."

Most of the nursing assistants in the United States are women, usually between the ages of 25 and 44, and often immigrants or single mothers. The immigrants often come from countries where nursing homes don't exist. They find something honorable in caring for the elderly, though most say they would never put their parents in a nursing home.

"In Africa, we just take care of each other," said Mount St. Vincent's aide Tejitu Duget, a 33-year-old emigre from Ethiopia.

Many single mothers choose nursing home work for its flexible hours, and because they see parallel values in caring for their own children and those at the end of their lives.

"To me, they're just big babies that need some attention," said La-Crecia Martin, 25, a single woman with four children who works at the Highline Care Center.

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But the work is extraordinarily strenuous and carries one of the nation's highest on-the-job injury rates.

The average wage for nursing home aides is $8.37, though in the Seattle metro area, many homes have found they have to pay better to attract workers.

Even with many years of experience, wages rise only a few dollars an hour. Even aides who like hands-on nursing work end up switching to fields such as respiratory therapy, where their work garners more money and respect.

Given their low pay and benefits, aides often work exhausting double shifts so they can earn time-and-a-half wages, or juggle two jobs. An employee survey of aides at the Mercer Island Care and Rehabilitation Center, for instance, found between 60 percent to 70 percent had second jobs.

P-I reporter Heath Foster can be reached at 206-448-8337 or heathfoster@seattle-pi.com