Elder care has always been an area that appealed to Kandahar Home nurse Ana Workman.
“I’ve always related well to older people,” she says.
Ana is the longest-serving nurse at the Enliven rest home in Masterton, since starting her career there in the late 1980s.
While she has been there the longest, Ana jokes that her approach to working hasn’t remained stuck in the ‘80s.
Ana has completed the first stage of her Professional Development Recognition Programme (PDRP) and is working through the next.
In 2016 the Nursing Council of New Zealand approved Presbyterian Support Services, which operates the Enliven brand, to provide the programme. It is one of only two aged care providers in New Zealand able to do so.
Ana says this has helped continue her passion for nursing in aged care for the foreseeable future.
“I love this place and I love the people, and I’m not leaving anytime soon!”
Growing up in Wairarapa, Ana says she has known a number of people who have come to live at Kandahar Home.
“I think it helps the residents to see someone they know – it helps me too,” she says.
In her 32 years working at Kandahar Home, growth and developments in technology have changed the way things are done around the rest home.
The smaller size of the place in the late 1980s meant the nurses took care of the laundry. Hoists were also not as readily available as they are now and incontinence products were not quite the same.
“Kandahar Home has really got bigger and better,” Ana notes. “It really is a fantastic place to be a nurse.”
Enliven has homes offering rest home, hospital and dementia care across the lower North Island and is always on the look out for great nurses to join the team.
