Suchita Basnet did not arrive at her calling through a sudden revelation or a dramatic encounter with suffering. Her path into gerontology began, instead, in the ordinary rhythms of family life in Nepal, where the care of elders was woven into the fabric of daily existence as naturally as preparing meals or tending a garden. In the joint family system in which she grew up, multiple generations shared not only a home but the responsibilities and intimacies that come with proximity across the decades. To care for grandparents was not a choice one made but simply what one did.
Yet it was a single event that transformed this background hum of familial duty into something sharper and more urgent. When Basnet's grandfather suffered a stroke, she found herself part of the team caring for him at home. The experience gave her what she calls "a firsthand look at the challenges and the rewards of caregiving." What she witnessed during those days was not merely the mechanics of medical care but something more elusive: the way that simple presence, the act of being attentive to another person's vulnerability, could become a kind of medicine itself. It was, she says, a lightbulb moment. She changed her academic focus from general science to gerontology.
Now based in Northern Virginia and working in home care, Basnet has spent the last decade translating the values she absorbed in Nepal into the professional landscape of American elder care. The transition has required more than technical knowledge. It has demanded that she reckon with a fundamental difference between the two cultures. "I realized that many older adults in the United States do not have the same support systems I saw back home," she explains. The extended family networks that once cushioned old age have frayed or disappeared entirely, leaving many seniors to navigate their final decades with far less human contact than their circumstances require. Basnet's mission, as she describes it, is to bring the ethos of respect and companionship she knew in Nepal into this different context, to ensure that every senior can age with dignity regardless of whether family members live nearby or far away.
The work itself continually reaffirms her sense of purpose. When she visits clients and takes the time to listen to their life experiences, she encounters stories that offer what she calls "invaluable perspective." These are not the sanitized narratives of public achievement but the textured, complicated histories of ordinary people who have lived through wars and migrations, raised children, buried spouses, changed careers, endured illnesses, and somehow continued. The act of listening becomes, in her telling, both a professional skill and a form of witnessing. "Seeing the happiness and comfort they feel with the services we provide makes all the difference," she says. The satisfaction is not abstract. It is visible in the faces of people who might otherwise spend their days in isolation.
Her trips back to Nepal serve a similar function, reminding her that the culture of care she absorbed as a child still thrives. These visits are not merely nostalgic journeys but touchstones, moments that confirm the validity of her choices. "It reminds me that my work is not just about tasks but about human connection," she reflects. The distinction matters. Tasks can be completed, checked off, delegated. Human connection cannot. It requires time, attention, the willingness to sit with another person's discomfort or fear or loneliness without trying to immediately fix it.
For students and early-career professionals considering this field, Basnet offers advice that is both practical and philosophical. She begins with what might seem obvious but is often forgotten in the rush toward professional training: "Start with your family." Spend time with your grandparents or the older adults in your own circle. Sit down and really listen to their stories. Understanding their life experiences, she argues, is the best way to develop the perspective required for this work. The suggestion carries an implicit critique of educational systems that emphasize credentials over proximity, theory over lived experience.
She also recommends volunteering at a senior center. "If you want to understand the physical and social needs of older adults, go where they gather," she says. Such work strips away the abstractions that can creep into academic discussions of aging. It forces you to see elders not as a demographic category or a policy problem but as individuals with vibrant histories, people who have loved and lost and made choices they regret and choices they would make again. The volunteer who arrives expecting to offer service often discovers they are receiving something more valuable: a glimpse into what the arc of a human life actually looks like.
Basnet is also clear-eyed about the limitations of technology in this field. "AI cannot replace human interaction," she states flatly. While artificial intelligence can track data, send reminders, automate administrative tasks, it cannot truly empathize with a person. The observation is not merely a defense of her profession's relevance but a claim about what matters most in the care of vulnerable people. Empathy, in her account, is not a feeling that can be simulated or a protocol that can be programmed. It is something that emerges only in the presence of another human being, someone who can recognize suffering because they themselves are capable of it.
This understanding shapes her definition of what it means to be a healthcare professional. "To me, being a healthcare professional means being an advocate," she explains. "It is about supporting people who can no longer fully care for themselves and making sure they feel a sense of belonging." The language is careful. She does not say "helping people" or "treating patients" but "supporting people," a verb that suggests accompaniment rather than intervention. And the goal is not cure or even improvement but belonging, the assurance that one remains part of the human community even when one's capacities have diminished.
The responsibility, as she describes it, extends beyond medical needs. "It is about listening and being present for someone who might otherwise feel isolated." This vision of healthcare places emotional and social needs on the same plane as physical ones, rejecting the hierarchy that has traditionally governed medical practice. Listening becomes a therapeutic intervention. Presence becomes a form of treatment.
When asked about the changes she hopes to see in healthcare's future, Basnet focuses not on technological innovation or policy reform in the abstract but on something more fundamental: recognition of the people who do the actual work in the field. "Right now, the field faces shortages because the compensation does not match the value of the work," she observes. The mismatch is not simply unfair. It is unsustainable. It drives talented people away from caregiving and toward professions that offer better wages and more respect. She wants to see policy changes that offer better compensation and incentives for caregivers and healthcare workers, changes that would make the career viable for people who might otherwise choose different paths.
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What emerges from Basnet's account is a vision of care that is at once modest and radical. Modest because it does not promise miracles or cures, because it accepts decline and dependence as inevitable features of human life. Radical because it insists that these realities, rather than being hidden or medicalized, should be met with presence and respect. The older adults she serves are not problems to be solved but people to be known. The caregivers who support them are not mere service providers but witnesses to the final chapters of lives that deserve attention.
In an age that often seems to value productivity above all else, that measures worth by what one can contribute rather than by the simple fact of one's humanity, Basnet's work represents a quiet form of resistance. She spends her days with people whom society has largely deemed finished, people whose stories will not be recorded in history books, whose achievements have been forgotten or were never publicly recognized in the first place. And she insists, through her presence and her advocacy, that they matter. Not because of what they once did or might still contribute, but because they are here, because they have lived, because they are human.
The lightbulb moment she experienced caring for her grandfather continues to illuminate her work a decade later. What she learned then, and what she tries to teach others now, is something that cannot be captured in a protocol or measured by a metric: that the simple act of being present to another person's vulnerability, of listening to their stories and witnessing their decline, is not a professional service but a human necessity. It is how we acknowledge our shared fragility. It is how we prepare for our own aging. It is how we maintain the bonds that make us something more than isolated individuals pursuing our separate interests.
In Northern Virginia, far from the joint family system in which she was raised, Basnet has found a way to carry forward the values she absorbed there. She has translated the intimate work of caring for a grandfather into a professional mission. And in doing so, she has joined the ranks of those who believe that healthcare, at its best, is not about fixing or curing but about accompanying. About being present. About ensuring that no one has to face their final chapters alone.