Welcome to my dystopian world

Welcome dear readers to this, my first attempt at a web log. In this blog I hope to share with you the joys, the sorrows, and the frustrations, I experience and have experienced working as an AIN (Assistant-In-Nursing) in a high dependency aged care facility. Please be patient with me, and please do not hesitate to email me at robbie_beare@hotmail.com Criticism, either constructive or not is most welcome.

First a disclaimer: All the names, including my own, have in this blog have been changed, mostly using one of several pseudo-random name generators found on the internet, to either protect the guilty - the Aged Care Industry and its exorbitantly paid managers, or the privacy and dignity of the victims – the nursing home residents and the staff who directly care for them.

Should you wish to gain an insight into whom and what I may possibly be, I humbly suggest you read my profile for some hints. Aside from not being a son of Maggie, I am an employee of Dodgy Brothers Care, - Ross Dodgy's currently medium sized yet rapidly expanding empire which presently oversees 23 care (some may dare to think care-less) facilities and some 1700 human resources in the sunny state of Queensland, Australia.

In a utopian world, there would be the concept of “truth in advertising”, and my employer would be known to the wider community as ‘Dodgy Brothers Care’. However as we live in the real world where advertising rules and all that glimmers is gold, there is no such concept of truth and thus my employer is widely (wildly) known by a different, less truthful, yet more flattering name.

My employer knows me not by my Nom de Plume Robbie Beare, disloyal employee #00666, born 6/6/66. For if they did, I would most certainly now be unemployed. So if you know who I really am please do not tell the bastards.

I have worked as an AIN in Queensland for almost seventeen years. In this time I have worked in eight high care facilities, for five different employers both for-profit and not-for-profit, church-based and non-demoninational.

How then, does my current employer compare in the provision of Aged Care? My opinion is: on the whole, no better nor no worse than any other Queensland Aged Care provider. All Dodgy Brother’s Care facilities gained accreditation in the 2003 accreditation round. The nursing home I work in passed all 44 standards in August 2003, and indeed received several “Commendable outcomes" from the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency http://www.accreditation.aust.com/index.html. More about this agency in a future post. Suffice now to say, I liken their efficacy to the Red Cross inspecting the Theresienstadt Concentration camp.

What then has prompted me - a meek and mild caring AIN to undergo a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like transformation into the subversive Robbie Beare, a lean mean, nursing machine (de-emphasis on the lean)?

My employer is actively, even aggressively attempting to promote itself as the leader in the Aged Care Industry. I strongly believe it has no right to seek this position.