“Almost everything has been because of tears,” Peter Murphy Lewis says of the footage he is proudest of. “There were moments where we just held each other’s hands and sobbed for minutes while the cameras kept rolling.” That is not how most people describe a piece of marketing, and it is a fair warning about what this episode is. It is a conversation about long-term care that spends most of its time on hospice, on dignity, and on the words people use about where they live.
The show is Roundtable Talk, Varsity Branding’s podcast on longevity and aging. This is episode 21, recorded on 11 September 2025 and running just under 48 minutes. Peter is billed as a documentary filmmaker and co-creator of People Worth Caring About, the series that puts frontline caregivers in long-term care communities across the country on camera, and the episode was set up as a conversation about that project.
What it turns into is an argument about who a story should be about. Peter began working in long-term care in 2020, trained as a CNA so that he would understand the job rather than film it from outside, and brought with him a storytelling format he had built in South American television. The result is a series that deliberately keeps owners and executives out of frame. That decision is the part worth borrowing, whether or not you ever commission a film. Our article on digital marketing for healthcare picks up where this conversation leaves off.
Key Takeaways
1. Caregivers were fighting a bad reputation before COVID, not because of it
Peter’s starting point is not a marketing problem, it is a reputation one. “Caregivers were fighting against a negative perception, a negative narrative, a negative reputation that started before COVID but was accentuated during COVID by bad media,” he says. The distinction matters. If the damage were only pandemic coverage, it would fade on its own. He treats it as older and structural, which is why he thinks it needs stories rather than a press response. His own grandparents’ good experience in a nursing home is what first convinced him the public picture was wrong.
2. Put the caregiver at the front and the story stops being attackable
This is the editorial rule the whole series runs on. “If you put the caregiver at the front, nobody’s going to criticize a caregiver,” Peter says. Owners and executives invite an argument about ownership, staffing and money. A certified nursing assistant on shift does not. The show’s own notes make the same point: by focusing on staff rather than operators, the series sidesteps the criticism that usually greets anything published about long-term care, and builds empathy instead. It is a defensive choice that happens to produce a warmer film.
3. The CNA job is read as chores when it is mostly relationship
“People think of CNAs as cleaning bathrooms and changing diapers,” Peter says. “They don’t realize how beautiful it is in the relationship that you get to make.” He became a CNA himself rather than take that on trust. Filming in hospice is where the gap showed most, particularly in the bonds between residents and very young caregivers, and he describes moments where he and the people he was filming “just held each other’s hands and sobbed for minutes while the cameras kept rolling.”
4. Documentaries move opinion because they are long enough to hold a contradiction
Asked why he works in this format at all, Peter puts it plainly. “Stories are pretty much the only thing that can change our opinion in life,” he says. “Documentaries do it better because they’re long enough to show the contradictions of humankind.” Length is the whole argument. A short spot has to resolve; an hour does not, and long-term care is full of things that do not resolve. He also wants the films to reach young people who have never thought of caregiving as a calling.
Rapid Fire Q&A
Q: Why did a documentary filmmaker start working in long-term care?
A: His grandparents had a good experience in a nursing home, which sat badly against the public picture of the sector. He began working in long-term care in 2020 and later trained as a CNA so that he understood the job before filming it.
Q: Why film staff rather than owners or executives?
A: Because staff are not a target. “If you put the caregiver at the front, nobody’s going to criticize a caregiver,” he says. Leadership stories pull the conversation towards money and staffing. Caregiver stories build empathy and get past the arguing.
Q: How far has the series traveled?
A: It started in Nebraska and has since filmed in states including Ohio and New Mexico, with more seasons in the works. Alongside the podcast and a multi-part documentary series, it now runs on smart TVs nationwide.
What This Means for Long-Term Care Operators
Start with the casting decision, because it settles most of the others. Peter’s rule is that the caregiver goes at the front, on the grounds that nobody criticizes a caregiver. Put an owner or an administrator there and the response turns into an argument about staffing levels and money. Put a CNA there and there is nothing to push back against. That is not a soft choice about tone. It is what makes the film publishable at all.
Then look at how your own copy describes the work. Peter’s complaint is that the public sees CNAs as cleaning bathrooms and changing diapers and misses the relationship entirely. If your job ads read as a task list, they are confirming the stereotype the series exists to undo. He flags language on the resident side too: a man called Kevin describing his nursing home as “my home” is one of the moments that changed how Peter thinks about dignity.
Format follows from that. His case is that documentaries change opinion because they are long enough to show the contradictions of humankind, which is an argument for one substantial piece rather than a run of short ones. If you want to see what that looks like in practice, the People Worth Caring About docuseries is the work he is describing here, and the format has since traveled from Nebraska into Ohio and New Mexico.
The recruitment payoff is the part operators tend to underestimate. Peter talks about intergenerational and family-based caregiving, including residents’ own grandchildren joining the staff, and treats it as a badge of honor when a community is good enough that a resident recruits their own family into it. Film that and you have recruitment material that does not read as recruitment. Strategic Pete’s senior living marketing services are built around exactly that kind of work.
Listen to the Full Episode
Episode 21 of Roundtable Talk, Varsity Branding’s podcast on longevity and aging, was recorded on 11 September 2025 and runs 47 minutes and 35 seconds. The full conversation goes further than any summary on the hospice filming, on the CNA training and on the language of dignity. Listen to the full episode on Varsity Branding.
