Empathy, compassion, altruism – these are three essential qualities for an excellent beneficiary attendant. Beyond know how, self-awareness counts in this profession that is in fact a vocation.
“You have to know how to put yourself aside to take care of others,” Émilie tells us, a beneficiary attendant in her early forties who has been in a CHSLD throughout her thirties. Empathy is indeed the first quality of the attendant, which shows itself in many professional attitudes: a calm and reassuring voice, patience when faced with the difficulties some patients have in their everyday activities, discretion and gentleness when washing patients and taking care of their general hygiene, listening to their needs and a sort of sixth sense that anticipates them or to ask the right questions to detect them. “You have to be someone whose energy is well channelled, because there are frustrating situations every day and a lot of anger on the part of some residents. You have to be comfortable with strong emotions and know how to tame them.”
The importance of human relations
“We talk less,” Émilie adds, “but I would say that you also need diplomacy in the relationships with the families of the seniors we care for. In fact, good communication is an essential skill in all spheres of our work. You have to know how to communicate with the patient at the time of care, to reassure him, secure him and make him feel that he is not losing control. You also have to establish exemplary communication with the caregivers, to whom any abnormality must be reported for the care plan. Finally, you have to know how to reassure the families and other visitors, who reasonably ask many questions about the health status of their loved ones in the CHSLD.”
The craft consists of an accumulation of small actions – feeding, washing, dressing, undressing. It’s not so simple, however, because you have to know how to give each of these actions a soulful supplement. “Each action must be as humane as possible,” explains Émilie. “You have to be more cautious than normal.”
Finally, the attendant must show resilience, be armed with a certain spirituality or a philosophical temperament, to know how to cope with the death of patients and remain professional in an end-of-life context. “We are in close and daily contact with illness and death,” Émilie says. “To get through this with a certain serenity means there is no choice but being psychologically strong…”