I and most other humans I know are obsessed with steps, and not just of the 12 variety. 

We wear tracking devices 24/7, like an entire society under house arrest, and monitor step counts with religious fervor. 

Since abandoning the country of my birth decades ago, I have no idea how a modern Canadian achieves accurate tracking, since they’re usually on ice-skates, which seems like cheating. I also don’t know anymore how to convert steps from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

But in America at least, 10,000 steps is a popular, though constantly debated, daily objective, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to meet it, no matter how absurd. 

I’ve made dozens of dizzying circles in my apartment late at night just to hit the target. Author David Sedaris has confessed to moving his arms in a running motion for five hours on an airplane to fool his Apple watch and meet his step goal.

For most of us, where our steps actually lead isn’t the point, as we’re generally not taking them to get anywhere in particular. It’s mainly self-interest, leveraging a positive health habit to live longer, or maybe even forever. 

But for those of you who work and walk the floors of a long-term care facility, probably far exceeding that magical 10,000 every single day, your steps signal something far deeper. 

Mine are mostly about me, and achieving a personal goal. Yours take you outside yourselves, for the good of your residents. Along the way, you achieve a personal health benefit, of course, but that’s not why you do it. 

I know how elated I feel when I meet and exceed my step target. So I can’t imagine how much more richly satisfying it must be to know what each of your steps mean to those for whom you provide daily care. 

Being good folks who like to support noble efforts, most of us will sometimes devote a few hours on a weekend to take a few extra steps for a good cause, like the Walk to End Alzheimer’s or the Race for the Cure. But as frontline long-term care staff, you do that all day every day. 

Maybe you’re a rehab therapist walking slowly beside Bill, whose every move is a battle, or a CNA bringing water to June, who can’t get it for herself. Whatever your role, meeting a step goal is probably the last thing on your mind as you endlessly rush around answering call lights, taking vitals, ferrying trays or carrying med cups. 

My steps make my own life better, longer, healthier.  Yours do too — and someone else’s. 

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

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