After exchanging emails with the professors and the supervisor, I started my practice.
First was the house for seniors Máj.
At first, it doesn’t look like a practice placement, I thought I made a mistake, cause in my head the idea was different; as a place where nobody wants to spend the rest of their lives.
Maybe, I came to the wrong address, but not. The address was correct and then my supervisor joined me and we went into the house for seniors.
When we started walking around I thought I am in a fairytale. Everything was organized. They have a floor for seniors who can take care of themselves, but they need some help; a floor for seniors who need more help in there and a floor for seniors who have dementia and Alzheimer and they cannot go out alone.
On each floor they have a few nurses, employees for free time activities, physiotherapists and that was impossible for me, cause in my country I saw just a few employees who take care of all inhabitants in one house for seniors.
Also, there is one thing that impressed me, that they have three social workers, one of them is in charge of seniors, and the other two are supposed to care about all information about seniors that the employees write. I visited all offices there and they showed me how everything works there. I spent more time with the clients and we made things of ceramic.
Also, I spent time talking with seniors, they told me about their experiences from the home where they are. In addition, I had meetings with employees, where I got the opportunity to hear how they function in the system of this house for seniors.
Sharing experiences and stories, two weeks passed in this house for seniors.
I got a schedule for the next house for seniors. This week it was Hvizdal, a similar system to the previous house for seniors. This week I had different activities with the seniors.
We had activities such as a nature walk, where we talked about the natural resources of the Czech Republic. In addition, I had the opportunity to prepare decorations for the holidays, then we played board games, and we had a music lesson, too. The week filled with activities passed very quickly.
The schedule for the third house for seniors – Dobrá Voda – arrived in the mail. It was quite a distance from the other houses for seniors, but when I got there I was completely blown away.
The house for seniors looked completely modern, it looked like the seniors had been living there in the future. There were free activities that I attended, such as virtual visits to selected places of the world through virtual glasses. I had to try it myself, I decided to visit the Czech city Brno virtually, than visiting it live.
In this home, I got to know a slightly different system of working with seniors compared to the previous two homes. In addition, we visited the seniors and talked about all the possibilities they have in this house for seniors. I would especially like to emphasize the presence of one of the meetings related to one of the clients, where I could see in detail how a team works with one of the clients. The experience is indescribable. We closed practice in houses for seniors with a visit to one of the activities, where the retirees talked about traveling, where they traveled when they were young, how they traveled then and what memories they had from those trips.
Davor