My new co-worker’s eyes sparkled with excitement and anticipation when he said it, like a child on Christmas morning expecting to find a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree. “I love...
Great resume. Now can I have a lock of your hair?
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 20, 2023
When interviewing a prospective long-term care employee, you’re right to be extremely skeptical. In this age of blatant resume deception and social media artifice, reality can be many layers deep. So...
Let there not be light
By
Gary Tetz
Nov 17, 2022
It’s the first command in the Biblical creation story — let there be light. But if you’re working a night shift in a long-term care facility, I need you to stop reading this right now and go turn...
Don’t look left: Finding long-term care lessons in traffic
By
Gary Tetz
Feb 24, 2022
If you’ve read many of my McKnight’s columns over the years, you know I love to draw long-term care lessons from traffic experiences.
The pain of being human
By
Gary Tetz
Jan 13, 2022
With COVID-19 variants still punching long-term care staff in the face every day, it’s understandable for us to sometimes lose the ability to get our arms around the sheer scope of collective sadness...
My incredible shrinking lifespan
By
Gary Tetz
Oct 14, 2021
With so much still to say to the long-term care profession, I’m realizing I better write fast, because I may not have many years left. Less all the time, according to a study from Oxford University....
Stronger at the broken places
By
Gary Tetz
Aug 19, 2021
Well, here we go again. Within long-term care especially, the shock and discouragement of the delta variant and the havoc it’s wreaking on those we care for and work beside is pervasive and demoralizing. ...
When good men say nothing
By
Gary Tetz
Aug 05, 2021
Though Genesis HealthCare is making vaccinations for long-term care workers mandatory, I’m not so foolish as to reveal my own true feelings about the requirement. I fear the warring ghosts of liberty...
Courage is contagious
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 02, 2020
Facility staff have no idea if catching COVID-19 will be merely an annoyance or a life-threatening battle, a parking ticket or a death sentence. But still, they go.
Face touching for dummies
By
Gary Tetz
Mar 05, 2020
Can you remember a public health directive than “don’t touch your face” that’s ever been more simple, clear and science-based, yet more difficult to execute? I can’t.