LIJO KURIAN
Residential Services Manager, Southern Cross Care, Carmelite Residential Care, SA
I have worked in Aged Care for 17 years commencing in 2003. As a registered nurse for 20 years, I worked in UK nursing homes until 2010. I moved to the Adelaide Hills and took the role as Site Manager for the Onkaparinga Valley Aged Care Facility.
I always wanted to help and assist people in whichever way I could and always felt great satisfaction when meeting other people’s needs. Working in hospital wards, I realised that elderly people need more care and support and felt that my future career should be in elderly care settings, rather than acute hospital wards. While studying my post-graduate diploma in management, I continued to work as a care assistant in Cambridge to understand the basic needs of elderly residents. This gave me huge insight into the challenges of older people, as well as their carers, and how to identify possible solutions for any presenting problems. I decided to remain in an aged care environment and make residents day-to-day lives enriched by making things possible for them.
My role at Southern Cross Care is Residential Services Manager at Carmelite and Lourdes Valley. I oversee all service delivery at the residential site, monitor to ensure compliance with all regulations along and deliver the best outcome for all residents living with us.
I work with a great team, particularly the Healthy Ageing Executive Director, Jo Boylan and the ever supportive CEO David Moran who back me up to ensure the satisfaction of residents, ‘no matter what hurdles you have to cross or climb, as each resident’s need are unique’.
I like making a difference to each individual elderly person’s life through planned interventions through the assessment-planning-implementation and evaluation nursing process.
As a site manager, I aim to assist families and older people to make the right choice and decisions, for them, upon entering the facility and then enrich their lives through delivering care support and a health ageing philosophy.
You need resilience and perseverance, to work in aged care, so that you get the result, no matter the obstacles in your path. Elderly people are most vulnerable, and it takes careful planning and thinking ‘outside the box’ to ensure that you get the best outcome, sometimes that includes using technology.
Providing care is more like a vocation, than a job. Anyone can become a nurse or a carer by competing the required curriculum, but it requires ongoing dedication and compassion. You need to be comfortable with yourself, control your emotions and use the correct communication approach which you acquire though training.
