About the SeniorAdvisor.com 2014 In-Home Innovation Scholarship: We started the scholarship program to bring awareness of the unique benefits and challenges of in-home caregiving for seniors to younger generations. The questions posed by the scholarship encouraged our nation’s future caregivers to present solutions for improving home care in the United States. College-aged students were required to answer one of the three essay topics below and provide a short bio as part of their scholarship application. Read the winning essays here.
How can your major of study improve the lives of seniors receiving in-home care services?
Essay response by Aisha Stanford
As a future-nurse in the making, my major allows me to speak with first-hand knowledge about in-home care services! Nurses are the mid-wives, in-home specialists, emergency room workers, trauma floor and long-term recovery healing protagonists. Speaking on the terms of age for this special essay, I am aware that age is, again, unavoidable and laden with health issues. That being said, this is why in-home care is so wonderful. People have been providing in-home care for many, many years. Even before we had specific names, such as “in-home care provider”, people felt an obligation to check up on those in need in their home. It was not only socially necessary but inescapable as human beings.
Nursing is much more than running around the emergency room floors and checking thermometers, patching scratches and tying up stitches. It comes with the sought-after desire to know that the people who came in for help, leave with the ability to receive help outside of the hospital. As a person with an aging family I deeply appreciate the fact that we have those who can provide care for them at home where they feel the most comfortable and at peace. It’s like tying the ribbon onto the gift, the final touch to a personable and secured way of continuing life. I also know in-home care goes farther than seniority; it can be for the severely sick, those at their maternity deadlines, those rehabilitating, those mentally starting over, and the recoveries with a responsible overlooking eye at their side. My future-nursing career will take me so far beyond the hospital doors and I am so excited to get to learn what I will be able to do with it.
Knowing that there are others out there who are aspiring to be helpful, loving nurses and reach out a hand to help people become stable, healthy and happy motivates me even more, also knowing that the cycle to keep up on a person’s health carries into the home keeps me thinking of the importance of checkups, meaningful questions and a healthy home environment that needs a careful and caring eye. Being a to-be person in the caring position I can only imagine how fulfilling it will be to know your patient lived out the rest of their life in peace and gratitude, with great health and truly memorable experiences for everyone else in their lives. Life is so short and age comes so fast. I am proud to be learning how to be one of those people waiting right around the bend to help you out.
About Aisha
Aisha is an aspiring pre-nursing student.
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