Chapter 5: Paralanguage In A Nursing Home

Chapter 5: 1.) Paralanguage is communication that is vocal, but does not use words.
Christopher had to learn how to talk with a ventilator because every time he spoke it would cause gaps in his speech and he had to learn how to communicate over the phone and in front of people so they could understand him and what he was saying.
2.) Haptics is the sense of touch.
For the first five years after Christopher’s accident, he couldn’t feel anything between a pinpoint of a cotton swab. After five years he could start to tell the difference between the two. I have worked in a nursing home for nine years, and I have seen some residents that have come into the nursing home with a disorder in their speech. It isn’t easy to understand them, but if you make the effort you can communicate with them whether it is through making a flash card or just slowing down how you talk to them, and stopping and listening to what the resident is saying.
Emotion work is an effort that we generate or try to change emotions because society tells us. I work in a nursing home and deal with a lot of elderly patients. I feel attached when a resident passes away that I care about. I also feel attached from some of my residents because the facility that I work in doesn't want the staff to get attached to the residents. My Director of Nursing (DON) doesn't really like to deal with or listen to staff complaints or their side of things. Sometimes my DON doesn't want to listen to the residents’ complaints or staff complaints, whether it is about how a staff member treats them or how another resident treats them. It is our job to protect these individuals and to keep them