The Fields is the name of the nursing home that lies in the middle of the one of the nicest suburbs in Adelaide.
Almost 80 percent of the residents are women, the oldest being 103 years old. They live within the four areas that are named after grains: oats, rice, barley and rye. Rye is the dementia ward. There are at least 10 teams that are in charge of completely different duties such as Nursing, Kitchen, Lifestyle, Community, Personal Care, Administration and Cleaning.
The system they use to communicate between teams and to record a history of each resident is called People’s Numbers; with a click on the appropriate ribbon and window of the computer a report of what a resident has been up to can be produced. Did they attend the gardening hour? Did they have morning tea today? Did they watch a movie in the games room? Did they have some medicine and at what time did this happen? When did they see their doctor last? Are they feeling ok? Did they have a one-on-one chat with someone today? Have they been to the hospital? Did their children come to visit them?
In the paperwork used to record activities, the residents’ preferred names are highlighted or sometimes used instead of their real names. Some of those preferred names are pretty obvious, and some are completely unrelated. When Susan first started to upload some of the activities into the system as part of her duties as a volunteer, she was very confused by that fact. It was hard to find an Elizabeth who was registered as Maggie, for instance. After a few weeks, she felt she knew nearly all of the residents even though she had never seen any of them. Susan could recognise who were the active ones, almost who was friend with whom, by the closeness in room numbers and through their attendance to certain activities.
Susan learned more and more about life in the nursing home and she loved capturing information in the system. ‘All of the work they do here makes such a difference in the residents’ lives,’ she thought, while smiling and working.
One morning, she couldn’t find someone’s name in the system and after asking what was wrong, she was told that it wasn’t a system error but rather, that person had passed away. Sad news. The number in the system had no name anymore. The following week, a new name appeared, but with the same number.
Some other names changed areas, mostly going into the dementia ward. Now, they had a new room number in rye. Fewer lifestyle activities, almost none. From now on, only the room number was going to be consistent.
Susan refuses to look into the system for numbers, even though that would make her work easier. She looks for the residents by their real or preferred names but avoids searching for their room numbers. Numbers sadden her. In Susan’s mind, the number somehow erases the person, their life, their memory, their legacy.
Burnside Writers Group 