(Taken from the Des Moines Register, Sept. 17, 2017)
In a recent survey of the staff at Northcrest Community in Ames, one thing kept coming up again and again: the residents.
"The staff were all saying the reason they like being here is because of the residents who live here," said CEO Linda Doyle. "We're here for the residents. The residents depend on us. We're their family. And they care about us."
Northcrest offers a continuum of services from independent senior living to nursing home services. And Doyle said all of the 133 staff members feel personally connected to the 175 or so residents. "It is really a family," she said. "It is part of that connection of people knowing that when they leave their job at the end of the day, they know they've made a difference in someone's life."
Doyle likes to say that residents make a choice to live at Northcrest over other senior living options,. And she thinks that same calculus goes for the staff.
"We have that core group of people for whom this really is a career, it's not just a job," Doyle said. "This is a choice they've made, not something that they had to do."