ABC World News Tonight had a piece tonight about the deplorable conditions in America's nursing homes. They started off by saying that 90% of nursing homes received citations in their last survey. Yah...they neglected to say that the scope and severity of them determines if it is a patient care issue. They showed a woman who was covered with bruises. The DPH investigated and found the facility faultless. But the article implied that we are all evil people who torment and abuse old people.
Of course I wrote to ABC news on their web site. Unfortunately, one is limited to 500 words and you guys know by now that I tend to go on.
If you get a chance to watch the piece please do and then write your own reply to ABC. I invited them to come to my facility ...of course they won't. Showing a beautiful well run nursing facility is not part of their agenda.
Okay, I gotta question. Will you put your money where your mouth is? All these folks, talking about how bad it is that these folks are in nursing homes. Fine. You want more staff, better care, then get Congress to fund adequate nursing hours for medicare/medicaid -- in fact, make it a requirement that we don't have "8 minutes a patient" for nurses.
These same folks who tell us how horrible we are, tell them that to meet the needs of grandma/grandpa you're going to quadruple the cost to hire adequate staff, and then they'd REALLY scream....or tell them we can't take their parents or grandparents because due to staffing, we won't have an open bed until sometime in 2010.
Unfortunately, until Congress bellies up some cash and puts some regulations in place with teeth, nothing's going to change....
Okay, I gotta question. Will you put your money where your mouth is? All these folks, talking about how bad it is that these folks are in nursing homes. Fine. You want more staff, better care, then get Congress to fund adequate nursing hours for medicare/medicaid -- in fact, make it a requirement that we don't have "8 minutes a patient" for nurses.
These same folks who tell us how horrible we are, tell them that to meet the needs of grandma/grandpa you're going to quadruple the cost to hire adequate staff, and then they'd REALLY scream....or tell them we can't take their parents or grandparents because due to staffing, we won't have an open bed until sometime in 2010.
Unfortunately, until Congress bellies up some cash and puts some regulations in place with teeth, nothing's going to change....
a dream i have....
to one day have one of those congressman in my facility so he can see 1st hand how his regulations work
Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.
I can't believe I just read a couple of nurses defending their nursing homes and saying they do a good job. Thank God. I thought they were all awful.
All the ones I have seen were pretty bad.
Of course there are good and bad homes-and what one person might perceive as a patient care problem when they are walking down the halls might just be a judgement based on ignorance.Due to privacy laws when you come to my unit I can't tell you why several of the ladies on my unit spend their days seated in the hallway adjacent to the nurse's station.To you it may look awful-like they are neglected,bored.lonely---however they will tell you they sit there every day all day because they want to.The often refuse to attend activites and they don't want to sit alone in their room.It's no different then the LOL sitting on her front porch every day.I recently had the daughter of a new resident have a fit because " I don't want my mother sitting there with those zombies all day" Guess what? Her mother mobilizes herself to the area every day-she loves to watch the coming and going...I work on a 44 bed unit-on day shift we sually have 3 nurses and 5 to 6 cna's....Our dependent residents are kept clean,hydrated and their skin is intact.We seldom see a resident sustain a pressure area in our facility.It is a county run home-it is not pretty.If I had a loved one needing care it would be in this facility. We are well staffed with little turnover because we have good benefits and competitive pay.We work hard and we become a kind of family for these residents .The blood families should not be subjected to journalism like this ABC story.....Write in and let them know how you feel about it.....
I am always amazed when a family member tells me something like, "I was really worried about putting Mom/Dad in a nursing home but this is a really nice facility and you all take great care of Mom/Dad!". Well, of course we do! What did you expect? We have had a couple of news stories about nursing homes here in which one woman had several stage IV's that were festering and her cath tubing had embedded in her leg. She died shortly after being sent out and heads rolled. Several nurses (rightfully) lost their licenses d/t the neglect there. The other one was a woman at an ALF was finally sent to the hospital and had maggots in a wound on her leg. Both accounts made me feel bad as a nurse and a human for the suffering of those ladies, but I think it highly unfair to blanket all LTC as bad, evil places when in truth it's just a few that are sub-par at best.
Wow! I hope ABC reads this thread. Yes we are understaffed, but we do the best we can with what we've got- with all the cutbacks lately- its only going to get harder. As we like to say- work with your head not your feet- . CCM is right and there are good facilities out there (please come visit mine 24-7) but there are many, many miserable ones where pts are abused and thats a fact. If ABC sheds some attention and one facility cleans up its act- than good for ABC- but its the responsibility of the administrator to see that the facility is well run, properly staffed etc. We can only do so much with what we;ve got. I think we should be credited for taking on all that we do!!!
Wow! I hope ABC reads this thread. Yes we are understaffed, but we do the best we can with what we've got- with all the cutbacks lately- its only going to get harder. As we like to say- work with your head not your feet- . CCM is right and there are good facilities out there (please come visit mine 24-7) but there are many, many miserable ones where pts are abused and thats a fact. If ABC sheds some attention and one facility cleans up its act- than good for ABC- but its the responsibility of the administrator to see that the facility is well run, properly staffed etc. We can only do so much with what we;ve got. I think we should be credited for taking on all that we do!!!
hear hear!! great post!!
As the weekend manager, I give lots of tours to people that just pop in. I am lucky to work in such a wonderful place. It's physically gorgeous inside and out which helps 1st impressions. I get so many of these people saying to me "it doesnt stink here". I also get a lot of people that have a list of questions and i tell them thats good! sometimes i help them add questions to their list if they are searching for a facility for their loved one. often they will ask about our state survey. i always sit down at a table with them and explain the results. and i always get "is that it? thats what those violations mean?" the public just hears "violations" but dont realize it could be something very simple. i try to help them understand survey results so they can make informed decisions.
i almost always hear that i've been the most informative person they've talked to at any facility. I try to tell them things that I told my own mother to look for when she was looking for a place for my grandmother.
I invite them to walk around the facility on their own and i also walk them around the facility myself.
one thing i learned on this board somewhere is to offer them a meal so they know the food is good. had never thought about that but am going to add that to a tour if i can.
stories like this ABC story single handedly destroy everything good we have been doing over the past few years to improve the public opinion of nursing care in LTC!
it makes me furious! it's bad enough that you have commercials all over TV.."is your loved one in a nursing home? well let me sue them for you! i'll find something wrong and get you some money!" then you have people coming in ready to sue before they get there....now you have the national news "helping" us out.
I have been in LTC for 16 years. I knew it's what I wanted to do the day I walked on the floor for the first time as a CNA. but lately, i've been trying to keep myself from just walking away from direct patient care and going to phone triage nursing or something like case management. dealing with the sue happy people, the family members from hell...and now the national news giving them all more ammunition.....
Any normal thinking individual watches the news programs and knows that there are good stories for every bad-
for example not long ago there was a terrible story about ER care and a patient died in the waiting room, her body was overlooked by the medical and nursing staff etc.
Any normal person knows that NOT ALL ER's are like that, some are good and some are bad, I am hoping that most people know that good Nursing Homes exist and should be sought after.
Lawyers who pursue cases of negligence are only doing their job and its up to us to keep the standards reasonably high so they wont find these cases, I wish we had the staffing to ensure that!!
Trust me its worse when there is no checks and balances!!
StNeotser, ASN, RN
963 Posts
Oh dear. I've just found the story and the public comments are pretty bad;
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/comments?type=story&id=5922543