Our people- Parbati's Story.
Aged Care can often perceived to be very one dimensional in terms of career pathways, however, there are actually a myriad of opportunities for those who are open to them.
Parbati Thapa is the Clinical Care Manager at our Twilight Hunters Hill Village Home.
Parbati’s initial career plan was to become a Chartered Accountant, however, having children meant that nursing, with its different shift availabilities worked better for her needs. She became a Personal Care Assistant while studying (and mothering!) eventually achieving her Registered Nurse Qualification.
Working at Twilight, she has stepped into various leadership roles, but when the role of educator to twenty students who needed to complete a Certificate III in Aged Care as part of Twilight’s International Recruitment Project trial was offered to her, she had to think long and hard about what it would mean.
On the one hand possibly the opportunity of a lifetime, accepting the role meant an intense workload, first of all to complete her own qualification of Certificate IV in Training and Assessment in 5 weeks, (normally an 18 month course) and then 5 months in Nepal away from her family, teaching the cohort of students who would eventually arrive in Australia ready to work across our Twilight homes for the next 2 years.
“I was excited, but I was nervous” Parbati recalls. ” In the end I wanted to see if I was capable of achieving this goal. I know that everyone thought that I would be a good choice being from Nepal and having that connection and knowledge and understanding of the culture which is true, but at the same time when you go to your home country with this kind of role you feel there might be some kind of expectation or perception of you, but it went so well. It was very intense, teaching those twenty people 5 days a week nine to five everyday, then doing the assessments and marking at night, I feel like I was sleepless for five months!”.
“In the end, it was a fantastic experience although being away from my family for so long was the hardest part. I felt myself challenged to teach the students in ways they would understand, which meant getting to know them and their learning styles, working out how I could best apply the theory we were learning to their everyday experiences- for example one day it was raining and we were out near some puddles and I asked them okay, which part of the infection cycle is this – they really responded to my way of training and I’m so proud of them all. Sixteen of the students have come to Australia and are now working across our homes, and the feedback is very good, they are doing so well.”
Would she do it again?
Parbati laughs- “I might,” she says”if it was for a shorter time and there were less students in the class. I learned a lot from this experience.”
One of the things Parbati learned was that she would love to become an educator , further down her career pathway. “I feel like I can make a difference, and see things from a different perspective that seems to help people learn” she says.
“I can see myself in 15 years as an educator in aged care for sure. I think it’s so important to allow people the room to grow and develop their skills and knowledge. I have had the opportunity and I want to continue that with others.”
Thank you for sharing your inspirational story with us Parbati!
