Abbi Dunn loves her job at Medicalodge of Neosho.

She is the new social services director at the center.

“I came here for a change of atmosphere,” said Dunn, who had been working in Joplin. “I was working with the developmentally disabled and physically challenged. I just kind of wanted a change.”

Dunn has been in the social services field for the past three years, two of which were at her former location.

“At Joplin, I worked with individuals in their home or apartment and I also had to have 24-hour staff to just make sure that all of their needs were met, all of their doctors appointments were caught up and all of the meds were fine,” Dunn said.

She heard about the position in the newspaper. At her new position, she does admissions, helps residents throughout the facility where they have problems, and makes appointments to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

“The residents will come in or the hospitals will call me and tell me that they are going to be long term, short term, in rehabilitation or will be going to our Alzheimer’s unit,” said Dunn.

But it is the people and the job she really enjoys the most.

“I love my job. I’m a people person,” said Dunn. “I love to help people. I love to hear their interesting and cool stories back in their time and their younger years. Their times back then are different than now. Their stories are interesting to me.”

Dunn is the only one in her immediate family who works in a social service field, but her mother was a hospital nurse for almost 20 years and her grandmother worked at a hospital for 30 years.

Dunn’s goals include getting more experience and doing the best to her abilities.

“The more that I come to work, the more that I love the elderly,” Dunn said.  “I try to meet and spend time with everyone in the facility. When rehab is having a little bit of difficulty with a resident, I try to talk with the family to let them know that we are having a little bit of difficulty. We are encouraging ‘Could you talk to them?’.”

With every job, there are easy parts and hard parts.

“Easy parts are to mingle and get to know the residents,” said Dunn. “The hard part is if you got to make a decision rather to take somebody or not to take somebody and why and if somebody passes away.”

In her spare time, Dunn enjoys reading, watching movies, spending time with her husband, Travis, and their two black Labs – who are almost a year old and “very playful – and playing video games.

“My favorite video game is Pac-Man,” said Dunn. “My husband loves playing video games as well. I like to play and watch him.”

Asked what advice she would give someone wanting to go into the social services field, she gave a couple of pointers.

“You have to have patience, you have to have a heart, a big heart, to relate to family and residents,” Dunn said.