Valerie Peterson has been a home health aide with Partners in Care for seventeen years. She cares for clients living in an adult home.This is her story:

When I go into my client’s rooms they smile at me. They’re so happy to see me.  They depend on me to take care of them. I feel great knowing that I’m helping someone. 

There’s one client that I have that’s blind. We have a sister bond. We talk about our kids. She says I’m not just her aide, I’m her protector. “Anything that goes wrong, Valerie is right there,” she says.

When I have clients that are panicking or upset, I can calm them down. You have to get a certain bond with them. I have one client with multiple sclerosis. She has difficulty talking and other people don’t understand what she’s saying. They come to me to find out because I spend enough time with her to understand. You have to have compassion to do this job.

When I take care of clients, I try to give them all my love. Because you don’t know when you might be in that situation. Everybody knows somebody that’s sick and needs help.

Partners in Care offers great training. You’re not going out in the field without knowing what you’re doing. We go for training twice a year and learn new skills. Just the other day I had to take a client’s vital signs because the social worker was concerned that he wasn’t doing well and the nurse was busy with another patient. It’s good to have these skills because you never know when you’re going to be in an emergency situation.

If it wasn’t for home care workers a lot of people would be in the hospital. A home health aide really does a lot. We save the government a lot of money.

When I take a client to the doctor, the first thing the doctor asks is “How is your client doing?” They’ll ask the client too, of course, but sometimes the client will say, “Oh I feel fine”

But maybe this morning the client was complaining that her back hurt so I’m there to say, “Actually, doctor, can you look at her back because it was hurting earlier today.”

The home health aide is very important, just like the doctor is important. Just like the nurse is important. The doctor and the nurse aren’t with their patient all the time, I am.

If I see anything wrong with my clients, I call the nurse right away, even if it’s just a little cut. Because of my work, my clients are less likely to end up in the hospital because something went unnoticed.