Nurses have a world of opportunity to explore when it comes to navigating their career paths. Hospitals are a huge draw, offering a variety of departments and shifts that allow nurses to practice in a specialized area of their choice as well as structure their careers around the rest of their lives. But other options exist, and some nurses prefer an alternative to the pressure and fast pace of acute care.

As people are living longer and the US population ages, long-term care is emerging as a growing niche within the nursing profession. While historically, long-term care nursing has constituted only 5 percent of all nursing jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 20 percent growth rate in the demand for nurses in this specialty between 2006 and 2016.
On a personal level, long-term care nursing can offer a more regular schedule, many times with nights and weekends off. It also offers a chance for a connection with an older generation.

“The best part of my job is knowing that daily, we are making our residents feel cared for, purposeful, happy and healthy,” said Angie Pierce, RN Administrator at Park Place Senior Living in Platteville.
As Pierce indicates, people choose to move into a long-term care facility for many different reasons and have needs that vary each day for each resident. As such, long-term care nurses wear many hats. Renae Creasey, RN, has been the administrator at Morningside Assisted Living in Lancaster for four years. She says the best part of her job is spending her days with the residents.

“I am here for their medical needs, social needs, counseling needs,” she said. “I get to be there for the good times and the bad times. We develop a close relationship and bond with our residents.”

The varied needs of long-term care residents can also present a unique challenge to the nurses and aides who care for them. While addressing a challenging medical need may require basic nursing skills, long-term care nurses must also convey the needs and behaviors of each resident to caregivers as well as family members.

“The most challenging part of my job is to open the eyes of the staff and family to the unique perspectives of the individual resident,” Pierce said, “to teach people to look beyond what they currently see and beyond the behaviors they may display, to who they were and who they are in their hearts.”

With a growing movement for resident-centered care, today’s long-term care industry is a far cry from the institutional stigma traditionally associated with the nursing homes. Senior apartments (with and without additional services) and assisted living offer home-like environments that allow seniors to preserve their independence for as long as possible. Creasey said that new nurses should keep this in mind when deciding which area of nursing to practice in.

“When I started nursing school, I had no intentions of being in long-term care. But as I did clinicals while in nursing school, I learned that this was the avenue I wanted to pursue,” she said. “Spending day after day with the elderly was enjoyable for me.”

Pierce, who has spent most of her nursing career in the long-term care industry, expressed that it takes a special type of person to be a nurse in this field.

“It is all about the formation of long-term relationships, which is unlike other nursing avenues where you may only see the client a couple of times a year or when they are acutely ill,” she said. “We long-term care nurses are blessed with the opportunity to see the whole person, not just the physical ailments.”

A long-term care facility, for all of the care it provides, is above all else a place that people call “home.” The average assisted living resident stays for 27 months, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Nurses are welcomed into this home by the people who reside there to provide health care, but also to share in their lives. A bond forms with these residents over days, months and years that would be difficult to foster in an acute care environment.

“The residents and their families become a part of your life,” Creasey said. “You learn to laugh, cry and share memories, as though they were a part of your family your whole life.”

Rebecca Bush is the human resources assistant for ElderSpan Management, LLC, a Madison-based senior services corporation. She holds a BA in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.