When it gets personal – McKnight’s Long-Term Care News

I’ll never forget the day my relationship with the long-term care field fundamentally changed.

Up to that point, I saw myself as a journalist covering an intriguing, if somewhat distant industry. I was eager to learn the basics: how the enterprise cared for older adults, how heavily it leaned on Medicaid, how perpetually short-staffed it seemed.

But if I’m being honest, I was watching the field like an outsider peering into a petri dish. Curious. Engaged. But not personally connected.

That changed one afternoon — thanks to an unexpected experience.

My next-door neighbor, still relatively young, developed a serious leg problem that required surgery. Afterward, he was discharged to a skilled nursing facility for rehab. Nothing unusual about that pathway, of course.

But visiting him felt very different from my past visits to skilled care buildings. This wasn’t just another head in a bed. This was someone close to my own age, someone I’d shared barbecues and conversations with. And now he was in a care facility that, to me, was meant for, well, old people.

Suddenly, this world I had been reporting on from a safe distance didn’t feel so distant anymore. With just a few different cards dealt, it could have been me in that bed.

That’s when the attitude adjustment hit.

I still work hard to stay informed about the skilled care sector — particularly policy changes, regulatory burdens, workforce crises and the industry-shaping trends that matter to operators and managers. That part hasn’t changed.

But something else has: I no longer see this field as just 15,000 or so buildings providing care to “other people.” I now see it as a place where I — or someone I care deeply about — might end up.

That new perspective has deepened my respect for what you do. It has also sharpened my lens. I try to write with more empathy. For residents, certainly. But also for the leaders and staff trying to provide care under extraordinary pressure.

And, to be candid, it has also made me think more critically about the rare bad actors who still slip through. When I hear about facilities cutting corners or mistreating residents, I wonder: Don’t they realize they could eventually be occupying one of these beds too?

Because sooner or later, this industry gets personal — for all of us.

John O’Connor is editorial director for McKnight’s.Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.