Nursing Home Diaries

     
                              When life seemed so simple



Morning meeting went well, the Administrator laced out the maintenance assistant in front of a crowded room of coworkers.  We all felt that one, the look on the guy's face made us all cringe.  This Administrator is quite a shrew, she lit into him much more than was necessary.  Other days she has reamed out nurses and dining staff.  Ruling with an iron hand, she thinks if she puts fear in our hearts she has the upper hand.

I pick up my tablet, behavior sheets from nurses and aides and my pen after morning meeting, I can't seem to leave that room fast enough.  Back in the office I look over behavior sheets.  One says a resident, here for rehab and who is quite alert, complained about not getting taken to the bathroom fast enough.  I don't know how many times I tell nurses this is not a behavior, he has a right to complain about crappy service.  

We have to read these sheets every morning at meeting and when I got to the one concerning the lady who wants a room all to herself and freezing, then roasting her room mate out, the Administrator says: "Can't we send her someplace?"  Sure, I'll send her to live with you.  The lady wants a private room and she is acting bitchy to the room mate.  There is no cure for bitch.  The woman hates it here, I don't blame her one bit for that.  I do feel sorry for the room mate, but then, if nursing homes weren't so greedy, they would not have 2 people assigned to one small room.  Can we send the rich owner someplace? 

Corporations providing freebies on your dime

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When I was being trained as an Activity Director at a nursing home owned by a large corporation, we had to get up at five in the morning during senior games time.  The reason for this early rising was because this place I worked for was providing food for the big corporate meeting for the games.

Now the senior games (the senior Olympics of sort) may be a nice thing but I couldn't help but wonder how this nursing home could provide a better breakfast for corporate people and seniors in the community and the sponsors of the games, than they provided for the people living in the nursing home and who were paying to live there.

I've said before, nursing homes pull in the lion's share of Medicaid.  A whopping 85% of Medicaid goes to corporations and is nothing more than corporate welfare in my book.  Why people insist on hating the poor and not laying it at the feet of big business is beyond me.  It will always mystify me. I see postings, after postings on social networks, which amount to nothing more than the poor hating the poor.  Stop it!  The poor are not sucking your tax money up with a straw.  Big corporations are.  What's the answer though?  You want Grandma put out on the street?  I highly doubt it.

Well, during this big banquet which consisted of scrambled eggs, all sorts of danish pastry, fresh fruit and any juice and coffee they wanted, I observed those people with money come back for seconds and thirds.  I saw them wrap up danishes, croissants, rolls, you name it, and place the items in their big bags they carried.  So, again, how is it justifiable for this nursing home to provide better food to the well off, the well to do and corporate heads, than was ever offered to the people paying the bills?  When I questioned this I was brought to task and given a lecture by the Administrator, who of course, was a corporate tool.

My budget for activities, BTW, was a whopping 43 cents per day.  I had a budget of $350 a month for 120 residents and once gone, it was not available again until the next month.  This place had the audacity to constantly expect me to beg for donations for prizes for bingo games and volunteers to help during activities because, God forbid, they hired any more help.

Food for thought the next time you attend a care plan meeting for your loved one. Remember, YOU pay their bills. 

Animals provide love for the elderly

Animals can help reduce loneliness, grief, fear and pain. St. Barley’s had a couple who lived there together for over ten years. After the wife died he started to regress and came out of his room less and less to intermingle. But I did notice that one of the few times he would come out and even have a faint smile on his face was when the animal visits took place.

Residents will, quite often, freely open up around animals because animals provide a safe avenue for communication. Animals do not judge us, do not talk back and are wonderful listeners and basically accept us for who we are.

Animals don’t care what kind of personal issues a person has, the animals live in the here and now. People will usually tell animals things they have never told any human being.

Taking care of an animal also takes a person’s mind off of their own problems, even if it is for a short while. A person caring for an animal must concentrate on caring for another living thing and attend to the animal’s immediate needs and, in turn, this can make a person feel needed, which raises self-esteem. This helps people focus their thoughts on something outside their own immediate problems and can give them a better perspective and help increase a person’s will to live.

Sometimes Administrators take a dim view of incorporating animals into the nursing home setting. Some fear other residents will have allergies or others will trip over animals and get hurt. They also fear residents will incur scratches or bites, but this is ridiculous because many elderly have animals in their private homes, some have several and for good reasons.

Animals help alleviate any loneliness the elderly may start to experience as they age. Animals make a place feel more like a home and much less like an institution and animals can help generate discussions whenever the elderly get together to chat.

Animal antics will usually always make residents laugh, or at least smile while watching them, this hold true for even the most cantankerous resident.

This doesn’t mean every family that tours a facility will like the idea of having animals living in the nursing home. That’s fine, and if it’s the case then maybe they are just too much into the idea of a facility as an institution or hospital.

But if every nursing home, or at least many more of them, adopted animals as part of the permanent setting, most families would just take for granted that the animals are an integral part of the nursing home setting. A nursing home that attracts animal lovers as staff is wonderful too because I tend to feel more at home with people who love animals. Those who love animals are more likely, in my experience, to also give loving care to people too. Where's the down side of that?

To help alleviate any burden placed on staff to care for animals, a facility could employ a high school or college student to come in each day to feed, water, empty litter boxes and maybe even transport an ailing animal to the local vet’s office. Maybe even volunteer groups would be able to just volunteer for this service as well.

But there are way more pros than cons to incorporating animals into a nursing home setting.

Disrespect for the elderly in our society

A hawk just swooped down in our yard the other day.  It grabbed a small dove and was gone in a flash.  At first it bothered me but I do realize even hawks have to eat.  I understand the survival of the fittest in nature.  But when it comes to human beings, I always hope for a more civilized approach.   

When I worked at a nursing home in Indiana, the elderly loved to have bird feeders outside their windows, those who were fortunate to even have a window.  Something hard to do when there are two people sharing one room and only one window.  One day the owner of the nursing home and the Administrator, told us at our morning meeting that residents could no longer have bird feeders in the courtyard.  Now this was a courtyard that no one ever sat in, it simply had grass and some gravel, nothing more.  When I got my Social Work curiosity up, I asked them why.

"Well, a hawk came into the yard yesterday, killed a bird and our maintenance staff had to clean up a dead bird."  According to the Administrator.  I felt that was no real reason, so maintenance had to clean it up, they get paid to do so.

The answer to that was: "Well it probably upset the residents to see a bird killed."   Really?  Most of our elderly lived on farms for a good share of their lives, they would hardly let a dead bird ruin their day.  

This was just blatant disrespect for the people paying the nursing home bills.  Unless residents out and out complained about a dead bird, they needed to leave well enough alone.  What the residents did complain about, was maintenance taking down the bird feeders. 

 Why do otherwise intelligent people try to second guess the elderly? They are adults, have been adults for many, many years, yet they get treated as small children with no voices.  

If you have loved ones in traditional nursing homes, when you see this kind of stupid stunt, you need to voice an opinion and a complaint on behalf of your loved one, immediately.  Never, never forget who pays their bills and salaries, making nursing homes a billion dollar industry.  Those figures are astronomical.  

I sincerely hope my adult children never act so disrespectfully to seniors in the community.  I hope I raised them better than that.  

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