Ashley Haruna 11/11/25

 Zack: Thank you for being here.  Could you please start by sharing your caregiver journey with us?

Ashley: Okay, first off, I really love that question because I had to sit back with myself and think, where did my caregiver's journey begin? And I brought it back to 2012 when I became a certified nurse's aide. I'm really a professional caregiver is how I would call myself. And when I became a nurse's aide, I was working in a nursing home while I was working my way through nursing school. And I didn't know at that time that working in a nursing home would spark this passion that I have for senior care overall. While I was working there, I realized that there are a lot of gaps in our system and there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to senior care.

When I finished nursing school, I left the nursing home and started working in the hospital setting, where I ran into senior patients again, and I started to see more gaps and how disconnected our community is when it comes to senior care. I was running into seniors who were falling at home, seniors who showed up with no caregiver by their side, no advocate there to explain what their medical history was, and things like that. That inspired me to save up and open my first memory care home, where it was a five-bed, residential facility…. we specialized in Alzheimer's and dementia. I was actually 23 years old at that time. And I really had the nerve to open up a facility and be in charge of five seniors with Alzheimer's and dementia. It was amazing. It definitely was amazing. This was 2016, 2017.

My goal was to create a new standard for senior care to show that there are different ways for us to go about caring for seniors. And from the nurse's perspective, I really did see a huge difference, from working in the nursing home, seeing the ratios, the resident-to-nurse and nurse's aide ratio versus the one-to-five ratio, it makes a huge difference.

COVID came and hit us. Unfortunately, my business could not survive COVID, not because any of my residents got COVID. Thankfully, we were COVID-free the entire time… But thankfully, I was able to transition into home care because some of our residents wanted to stay with us. And when they went back to their homes, I sent caregivers into their homes. We were able to transfer into home care from there. And we still do home care… I really work as a concierge service for my caregivers. Now, along with Home Care, I coach caregivers in how to use the same systems that I was able to use when I was running a facility -- how they can do it for themselves at home with their loved ones. Or even if their loved ones are in nursing homes, these types of systems are helpful for them to be prepared for emergencies, for them to just feel a little bit more in control of everything that's going on.

So, I was working as a full-time nurse and managing a house full of residents with Alzheimer's and dementia. And it was because of those systems that I had in place that made it possible for me to still work as a full-time nurse… I had situations where the hired caregiver that I had working in the home called off. And of course, because they called off, I then had to call off my shift. I definitely can understand that aspect for family caregivers when they're trying to juggle a job and take care of their loved ones. 

Selma: Your story is amazing! Do you see any trends that caregivers face on a daily basis due to flaws in the healthcare system?

Ashley: I would say coming across the challenges of, even though they go to the same hospital, they're still getting asked the same questions, and certain medications are being missed. One of the popular issues is that seniors have different chronic conditions. They have different specialist doctors who are overseeing their care, and the specialists are not communicating with each other.

The cardiologist might order a particular type of medication, and then the kidney doctor orders a different medication that contradicts with the cardiologist's medication…  so, because of those mix-ups, their loved one is ending up in the hospital more often. And when they end up in the hospital emergency rooms, their whole life is upside down for 24 to 48 hours.

Selma: That's a big one. Do you educate caregivers in terms of regularly following up with the medications and making sure they're not conflicting with each other?

Ashley: … It's really the primary provider's job to stay on top of all the other specialists because it's the primary doctor who's ordering that particular person to go see that specialist. The important thing is that every time they go to the primary doctor, they need to let that primary doctor know these are the new medications that my loved one has received. That's the main thing that I share with them….

Zack:  I want to go back to what you said that was so critical. You said that you understand from the aspect of a family caregiver because they have to take off from work, and you had to do the same when one of your own employees would have to call out, right? How did you deal with that? And what do you think are some ways that employees could better deal with that? How do you deal with the financial, physical, and emotional parts of it?

Ashley:  Walking through it, I know some of the emotions… because in healthcare, like nurses, we're a team. We go in there and we're trying to survive for the whole shift. We're trying to keep all of our patients alive. We're a team. So, it really did hurt me when I felt like my team didn't see me as being somebody who was dependable, and I didn't share with them why I really had to leave. So, they're not understanding what's going on. And so, it was a lot of feelings of guilt. And then also when you do return to work, there's a little bit of attitude. You could just tell that the other nurses, maybe like the charge nurse or sometimes even the manager, felt a certain way about you having to call off. And the way that I dealt with it was I started to have an on-call situation. First off, I would make sure the caregivers that I hire are people who are dependable. I also kind of knew their situation, like as far as childcare, if they usually had… any issues with childcare, I would know. Or if I'm noticing patterns of them leaving at the last minute or dropping the shift at the last second, I would know that, okay, my shifts can't align with their shifts. Or, I would have somebody on call that I could reach out to that I know is free during that time of my shift or I'll just let them know, hey, for the next 12 hours, I'm working. If this happens at the house, can you be there? That was the best way I could do. I just created another system to put into place. Just in case.

Ashley:  I would tell [caregivers] to share [at work] just because people like Zack and [Selma] are out there educating managers about people who are caregivers, and I think it's becoming a topic that's on the rise. And I'm excited to see that because we know in the next 10 years and the next 15 years, it's going to be pretty much everyone's situation. So, I would tell them that they should feel comfortable sitting with their managers, talking to them, and let them know what the situation is. I would definitely tell them to do something different than I did.

Selma:  On the flip side, Ashley, being the person who had to go back into the workplace and getting the attitude and the kind of resentment for calling out on your shift, what would you advise employers and managers in terms of being more supportive, more receptive of that employee who's coming back from having to go handle a care emergency?

Ashley:  That one is a hard one because, at the same time, being an entrepreneur, I understand how somebody calling off at the last moment can really throw a wrench into things. It's hard to say what the solution is. What I would say is, me being a nurse, you see that a lot of nurses are leaving the bedside. The way they could change the culture is by just really being appreciative of the people showing up to work. Like, thank you for showing up because caregivers are dependable. They're probably the most dependable people on this planet because that's the reason why they ended up with the caregiver title to begin with, right?  They care, and they're showing up when they need to show up. And I find that they're going to show up for their family, and they want to show up in every aspect of their lives. They want to show up at work as well. So, I think just the culture of saying, thank you for choosing us. Thank you for coming to work. We know it's not easy. We know that you have life circumstances. Just being grateful that they showed up to work…. spreading that message throughout the organization, to where it's even the nurse that I'm working next to saying, Oh girl, thanks for coming in today. Here we go. We're about to go at it again. Thanks for being here. I feel like that type of culture would be just a little bit more encouraging.

Zack:  In your concierge services, tell us a little bit about what you do. Why would somebody need you? And what are you seeing that they need you for the most?

Ashley:  The reason why somebody would need me is because they are so overwhelmed with everything that they're juggling. They're at work, they're parents, and they're now taking care of their mother or father. They need just a little bit of support. A lot of the time, what I find is that they need a companion for their loved one. That's the most common thing that I run into because they just need somebody to take over for a moment so that they can manage what they need for themselves… Sometimes it's, I have to be at work. My mother has this surgery, and someone has to sit by her throughout the entire time in the waiting room, and there's no way I could take a whole day off of work for this. And I'm able to assist them with that.

Most recently, I've been finding that I'm coaching caregivers naturally as I'm helping them find companions for their loved ones. I find that I'm also coaching them on how to put some systems into place. So that they don't have to feel like everything's on fire every time there's an emergency. Because those of us who are in this space know the common emergencies that occur. If you're ready for those common emergencies and those systems are in place, then you're not running with your head cut off. Of course, your emotions are still going to be heightened, but you'll feel a little bit more in control when it comes to a crisis that you come across with your loved one.

So, the three things that I do are companion care, surgical companion, and caregiver coaching.

Selma:  In terms of the caregiver coaching, what is one example or one thing you could point to regarding how caregivers can empower themselves? What is the one thing they should do first?

Ashley:  The one thing they should do first is create an overall care plan. I don't want to sell to you guys. I have a workbook, a digital product that I created to help caregivers I've worked with. It helps them create a plan… the workbook also breaks down having daily routines for their loved one and how that helps them when it's time to delegate this task to somebody else…. And then there is an emergency plan for the common emergencies like falls, behaviors. Maybe emergencies at the house, potential fires, storms. Having plans like that in place, I think, gives them more peace of mind…

Zack:  You seem to have a proactivity theme, which I really like. You probably saw a lot of burned-out family caregivers coming into the hospital setting when you were there, also in your nursing home setting, and even in your own facility that you ran. What one or two pieces of advice would you give a family caregiver to try to avoid burnout?

Ashley:  Trying to do it all. I run into a lot of caregivers, sometimes they become very possessive of their loved ones to where they don't want to trust the professionals to do it. They don't want to trust any other family members to do it. And I understand, you don't feel like anyone can do it like you can do it. And it's true. No one can do it like you can do it. But I think they absolutely need the help. So, because no one can do it like they can do it, they have to allow others in so that they don't burn out. Because if they burn out and they end up in the hospital, no one's going to know how to do it at all. I would say accepting help is the number one thing you can do to avoid getting burned out and take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. I consider that to be part of the care plan. You taking care of you is part of the care plan.

And it's hard to push for people to do it because they don't understand how. They know they should, but they don't know how.

Selma:  If you could just make one statement of the message you would like to leave our audience with today, just one sentence, why did you come here? What did you want to say to our audience?

Ashley:  The first thing that comes to my mind is you don't have to do it alone. You don't, that's what I would say.

Zack: How can people find you? My website: laperleconcierge.com. You can also find me on laperleconcierge on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Zack & Selma: Thank you so much.