Sleep overs

We have one new resident in my building whose daughter stayed overnight the first night to "help ease ma." I am unsure of the policy in my building, regarding sleepovers, but for the most part, they were okay. Except when "ma" would wake up with nightmares then start talking to her daughter... "ma" is HOH and legally blind, and they talk SO loud. I went in, talked in a regular tone close to her, and was fine.

Some families.... I do understand making exceptions for sickly or dying family members, but come on! I just felt like saying "stop being a DURRRRRRRRRRRRR" to the daughter, lol.

There is the legal question also. Everyone that is working in LTC or hospital has to have a background check. Where as we know nothing about the backgrounds of these people that sleep over. We have had problems during the day with visitors that roam through the hospital stealing purses and stuff out of patients rooms. God knows what would go on if they were there at night.

The same visitor that gets nasty when asked to follow some rules about entering and exiting the building will sue when they get mugged in a stair well.

There are such things as visiting hours....lots of folks don't respect them. A LTC facility is a person's home. I do not want someone visiting me after 8 or 9 p.m. at night after I have donned my sundries and crawled in to bed....Visits should be by invitation. Courtesy would be to call first and ask if one can come late...ugh....
Sleepovers- nah- don't think so- unless the person is on their way out or has a private room and then I think that there should be an understanding about it. Loke oramar said there are crazies out there...what if the person staying with momma or grandma is an offender and abuses momma or grandma, then we have to deal with that???? again-ugh! And I'm sorry- I'm all about the resident and being kind and courteous to their family, but I am not there to wait on the family- I am there for the resident....

I used to work in a facility that allowed visitors any time of the night or day for any length of time. They were trying for "culture change"...since this was the person's home, they can have anyone over any time they want. Not many abused this policy but, as always, there were a few that did and they were awful and caused numerous problems.

My current facility has posted and enforced visitation hours and I think that's just so much better. There are exceptions made sometimes, of course, like for a dying patient, but it's so nice not to have family members wandering around, barging into the mini-kitchen demanding food and drinks, all hours of the night. Visiting hours don't begin until 10 am, and it's really nice to be able to get the AM meds and care done without tons of family around too. If someone shows up before 10 the front desk will call up to the floor and ask if it's okay for that person to come up.

The roommate never complained? even so, it is wrong to the roommate. Our SW would be setting limits, would she have liked it if the roommate had brought his family to sleep next to him...
We also dont allow other people even family members to eat from the pts tray- even if the pt allows it.
The dietitian is very strict that all the food on the tray goes to the pt and if the pt only eats jello, than we should throw away the leftovers, and work with the pt to see what he will eat and not allow families to eat from it, if the family wants to eat, they can pay for a tray, (reasonable cost)
we once had a woman obsessed with feeding her son and would steal food from other trays to give to her son when he came each day, the son was embarrassed and didn;t want the food but didn't want to hurt his mother either,so he would eat the cold, poorly wrapped offerings. We worked with him to keep his mother from doing this, but this just made her depressed. In the end he paid for a tray, she got two trays, marveled at her good fortune, and would save a tray for her son, putting her leftovers and choice portions on his tray as well...
This is why we have Mother's Day

our facility allows this. it seems like every other room at our place has a family member staying 24/7. it is so commonplace at our facility that until i read the responses on this thread i had forgotten that in all the other places i've worked people didn't stay like they do in the one i work at now.

our facility is private pay or insurance for SNF, including medicare, only. we don't accept medicaid. i think that is a big factor in how our patients and families believe we should treat them like they are in a spa.

while i was giving a tour one weekend, had a lady ask "where's the pool?" and recently we had a lady ask where our "helipad" was because her husband would need a helicopter if he had to go back to the hospital. i swear it's true, lol.

our policy is that if they have a private room then whoever wants to stay can stay as long as it's ok with the patient. mostly it's just husbands and wives that stay though. we get a lot of people that will stay with their parent for the first night or two but then once they get used to us they learn to trust us and leave at night. thats real common at our place. a private room cost $15/day extra than the semiprivate if the pt is skilled. private LTC rooms are another matter. and we rarely have anyone stay with LTC patients unless they are dying.

but if a pt is in a semi private room then the rule is that only the same sex can stay. that way a son cant stay with his mom overnight if she has a roomate. that is to protect the roomate. and most are ok with this rule.

i think that we are just so used to people spending the night that we've forgot how nice it was when people didnt stay. *sigh* LTC sure has changed.

but i do have to say that most people are very nice. oh sure we get the anal ones but who doesnt i guess.

i admitted a 60y/o f last weekend s/p TKA. she was very apprehensive about coming for rehab. her husband stayed with her in the room. the next night before i left the husband came to talk to me. he told me that he had worked in LTC for 10yrs prior to retiring and moving to our state. he was supervisor of housekeeping/laundry. they didnt tell us that on admit. he told me that he wanted me to know how wonderful our place was. he said there hadnt been a person come in the room without a smile and that his wife was so comfortable that he was going home for the night. he told me he was going to talk to the administrator about us too and tell him how great we'd been to them.

you dont hear that enough,do you. it sure put a pep in MY step that night.

In my state, you can be a SNF certified medicare building without being a SNF certified medicaid building. If you don't have the medicaid certification you can not take a medicaid person.

This could sound like a good thing financially, but you run the risk of a very unstable census. Once skilled needs are complete, the resident is required to pay privately or discharge from the facility. Makes for wild ride with census, budgets, staffing, etc.

If the facility is certified by both, then we can not discriminate based on payor source either.