Voices of Glenwood Nursing Center...

i agree, but with a twist. i think the gov's attitude towards elderly care, for the most part, reflects the general publics in this issue. sure, everyone wants to "hear" good stories about elderly care and says they want them to be happy in their older years. but...........don't dare come up with a new tax that goes to nursing homes or put money into their care. much too busy building new sports stadiums and making the roads wider so we can do 70mph instead of 65.

people are only going to get what they pay for in a lot of things, and personal care is not an exception. with the lack of staffing and excessive/growing workloads that take the nurse away from the bedside................neglect is expected. anyone who thinks anything better than neglect is going to come out of the way these places are run is two burnt brain cells from living in "never never land".

The last state survey with citations only resulted in a huge increase in paperwork compliance & multiple daily audits by nsg management. This is going to improve the hands on care how?

What's scary is it's difficult to tell, in some scenarios, what's neglect/abuse and what is normal for that unit. The unit I've been working on lately (I'm casual in a facility I've been at for nearly a year) sounded quite similar to the way some of the people interviewed described the facility in the article- there are several residents who are bruised. One has been having more falls recently and a few are either on blood thinners or have extremely delicate skin...gently taking their arm can bruise it quite badly. You have to be very careful. Many residents pace the halls and an occasional one is very aggressive and will strike out at passersby until they are isolated. One cries very often for no reason that we can find, a few repeat and repeat and repeat complete gibberish, one taps the table ceaselessly.

There is usually one person on each floor who cries out regularly. Most of the more "vocal" residents suffer from dementia, but there are a few who are just extremely demanding and impatient. One woman hollers "Help me!" or "I can't!" constantly, no matter what you are doing. Even when she is just sitting there. We continuously ask her what's wrong and do everything we can to make her comfortable and happy but nothing helps. When taking her to the toilet or getting her up from bed or giving her a bath, she screams so loud you can hear it throughout the whole floor! I am always so afraid of visiting family worrying about her or wondering what we're doing to the poor woman.

The fact that the facility in the article has failed numerous inspections leads me to believe that the complaints by family members are probably true, and especially one of the staff members talking about it in the way he did should be a HUGE red flag. It sounds like this place cannot be shut down soon enough! But in many cases it's far more complicated- especially when so many of the elderly in LTC suffer from dementia. It is extremely important for visitors to be aware that sometimes there's more than meets the eye!