"Nursing homes" giving nurses a bad rap

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churdlpn

35 Posts

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churdlpn

35 Posts

you said exactly what i was thinking as a nurse who has worked in a "nursing home" for 8 years.

As far as how "it takes only a minimal amount of effort to oversee a group of old people and give them meds".........I really hope you will re-think that one. You said a lot in that statement about how you feel about the elderly. "Oversee a group of old people." No one is ever a GROUP of anything. Any patient you take care of will be an INDIVIDUAL. Yes, there may be similarities, as there are with patients who have COPD, or AIDS or cancer. BUT....EVERY ONE IS AN INDIVIDUAL, and should be treated as such. And cows and horses have someone to "oversee" them........people don't.

I hope you have the opportunity do a lot of clinical time. I think it will help you to understand what nursing is all about. Good luck.

Tweety, BSN, RN

34,218 Posts

Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.
I'm curious. If the OP joined in 2001 and has only one post to his/her credit, might we then assume that the OP is no longer here to see these recent responses?

OMG. I didn't notice this post was so old. Good call Angie! :rotfl:

UM Review RN, ASN, RN

1 Article; 5,163 Posts

Specializes in Utilization Management.

:D

It's ok, Tweety. It was one of those fluke things where I left the computer and came back and just sorta noticed that.

Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

Well, I work in a very top notch assisted living facility...sadly a very expensive one! Even with 5 star services...the residents and family still complain about things...it is all a part of dealing with consumers!

And I had to have an evil laugh when I saw that phrase about overseeing old people! OH MY!

Okay...you have three hoyer lift patients, two escorts with w/c, one with excort with walker, and two that get lost and wind up outside...then you may have a few independants...and you have 1 hour to get all their meds down, CBG's and insulins before getting them to the dining room for breakfast (hopefully you have them dressed and tolieted!).

Now say you are in the middle of a hoyer transfer for the first hoyer patient, and you get buzzed for room whatever because he is having a fit his shoes aren't tied and demanding immediate attention loudly in the hallway in his underwear, and the bed alarm in the other room is going off! Another room has a woman who is complaining that her arthritis is flairing up and needs a tray and her meds right away..."I can't take my meds on an empty stomach!".

As you lay your resident back into bed to tie the mans shoes and get him going fast, grab and order slip for trays and write that out as you are moving, and hit the bed alarm room on the way to the shoe dude...you hoyer resident has had diarrhea and it is now all over the bed and hoyer sling! Meanwhile you are three seconds too late for the bed alarm and you miss just catching her fall in her bathroom! Unannounced to you Mrs. Arthritis lady is calling her daughter to say that she has buzzed you three times and no responce (older people tend to not know time too well, and five minutes can seem to them like 15!) when she has only buzzed once! Now you have a family member mad..and it is only 0600!

Typical morning for me and my staff (we oversee 12-15 residents per section), and I have only been awake for 2 hours with barely enough coffee to keep me awake (this is 0500 mind you!).

BUT we get it all done and done wonderfully! I still don't know what drives us besides the love of the residents and respect for those that need our help!

Just a scenero for ya there...and it doesn't stop either! Oh yeah...you have orders to process, MD calls to make, treatments to do....it is a run all day long, and I am suprised that nurses continue doing it after a few weeks...but they do..bless their hearts!

If you see a nursing home you find questionable, look a little deeper or contact an ombudsman to check it out. The only way the not so savory ones still out there is because every one complains but does nothing!

I have seen some where the staff won't leave dispite things because they fear if they do their residents will suffer and feel they are the only ones that can make this bad situation tollerable for them...so they do their best despite conditions like no staffing, no communication, no equipment, careless staff, etc.

All families are too responsible for the care of their loved ones..they need to be involved in a proactive stance (not a complaint department separating this essential team!) and if they don't like things...get the resident out! But too many times this is not the case and it is really the family that sent 'grandma/grandpa' out to pasture! Very very sad to watch, and most of us go as much out of our way as humanly posible to be there for these people that feel very abandoned (heck, could be me some day..you never know!).

There is so much more to the dynamics of working with the elderly and I sure hope you learn them quickly. They aren't "old people" they are seasoned human beings with habits and livestyles they are accustomed to and taken away for the most part when they must move to a facility. And that part is one of the hardest to overcome for both staff and resident/family...(I have seen residents give up, decline meds, and die just because of the will to live is gone once they are moved!".

HyperRNRachel

483 Posts

Hi,

Im a nursing student and I'm putting my 2 cents in. I think if the public had a better idea of what nurses do, they would support us and not only insist upon but demand better patient care. Too many dont realize that the nurses are the ones on the front line and advocating for the patient. Too many people have only encountered nurses when they had their tonsills taken out or when someone in their family needed a C-Section. When my family or my friends families think of nurses, they think of "nursing" homes.

You know, I'm sure each and every one of you know what I'm talking about. You walk in and are almost knocked over by the smell of urine. You walk down the hall to your loved one's room and try not to look at the pitifull old people lined up and down the hall with their heads hung over, waiting for their morning meds. "It will make them more comfortable" is the reason for this soon to be dead parade. You find your loved one totally incoherent and with unexplained bruises and you wonder what happend to your grandpa(ma) that was so full of life just a month ago.

Your family may of put them there in good faith, believing that after a temporary family mishap, your loved one would come to live within the family once again or you may assume that this is the place for your loved one to live out his or her golden years (and give you a much needed rest). Unfortunately, your grandpa(ma) only lives a few months after being admitted and you can't understand why. Also your grandparents of your freinds that are in similar "homes" end up only living a few months as well. Soon the community begins to talk and you realize that, this is how nursing homes work. Once someone is admitted, they drug them untill they lose their will to live and just die. It's really a wharehouse for old people waiting to die to make room for the next wave of old people. They must make a half way decent profit as their turn around time is usually 3-4 months at most.

So when most mid-westerners (at least the ones I have come into contact with) think about nurses, they think about "nurs"ing homes and how it only takes a minimal amount of effort to oversee a group of old people and give out meds.

You overlooked the "family". Where is the family of the elderly? Are they pointing out everything the nurses should be doing or are the visiting their "loved' one on a regular basis? Is the family forgetting about their loved one? Is the family aware of the needs of their loved one and are they willing to provide the needs? Are they willing to spend less of their time to visit their loved one? Maybe the will to live is lost with the loss of family support not the surroundings or the actions of the nursing home.

Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

There once was a resident of mine who was very independant till she was walking outside her home and tripped on a sprinkler. She suffered a broken hip, and the poor thing lost all will to live!

She confided in me..."that all older people are so terrified of falling, because it is what sends you out to pasture quick! Like a horse breaking a leg...but at least humans have enough dignity to shoot the horse instead of letting it suffer alone".

I wanted to cry! That was so horrible to hear from my patient, and I found others felt the same way. Such a hard thing to change, the mind, and I do my best to show them that this is NOT true...that it is just a change in their adventure/journey and they have things they still need to experience and do!

She died of pneumonia three weeks later because she had no drive to live. She would not move, get up, eat, take her meds...just begged us to let her go. Her family was tired of watching this, said it made them "too depressed to visit and they had other things to do!". She died without family..just us weeping caregivers/nurses who didn't even get a thank you or time to grieve!

So many elderly suffer from severe depression and it goes undiagnosed or miss management of medications. This leads to many unsightly images in nursing homes...not that they are not attended to, just the mental state that takes time to heal! If anyone had seen her..they would have jumped on all of us...but she declined, and we can't force...it was her wish...and as hard as that was on all of us...we had to give her that right and dignity to choose her own destiny despite our own feelings...

i think it has to do with both. lack of family support, i.e. visiting, checking in on them on a regular basis, etc....and the lack of staffing. u can't possibly give one-on-one attention, like any person needs, not just the elderly, when ur busy handling 20 other patients and THEIR needs.

i don't think it's the nurses that r giving nursing homes bad reputations, they can only do what they can. i think it's the nursing homes themselves that r giving nursing homes bad names. and quite possibly, maybe one of the reasons these places r so understaffed is because cna's expect to make a lot of money. granted, they we do deserve more than we're normally paid, but i'd much rather work in an afh at minimum wage, getting paid more in the satisfaction of BEING in these ppl's last stage of life, then work in a hospital/nursing home/assisted living place that pays me very well, but gives no opportunity to enhance these ppl's lives on a daily basis. *shrugs* do we need more ppl in this world like me? quite possibly. *grins*

leopold

179 Posts

I am studying to be an LPN and have worked as a CNA in LTC for two years. When I first started I really, really, REALLY hated it, but after a few months I warmed up. I can tell you that for one, we, the staff, nurses, aides, administrators, etc. we LOVE our residents. No matter how long they are there, a few weeks, years, whatever, we always try to find a way to connect with them. We invest so much emotionally into these residents, whether they are completely unable to communicate, whether they're constantly getting into fights, whether they are drug seekers that try our last nerve or whatever is going on with them.

We do not use any restraints in our facility, they are prohibited. Yes we will put a belt around a patient in a wheelchair if they are very confused and keep getting up and falling, but usually we'll just opt for an alarm. We don't use siderails on the beds, if a resident keeps getting up and falling, we put them on a low bed with a floor pad.

The nurses I work with are passionate about advocating for the residents and will crawl all over anyone, from aide to doctor, to make sure they get what they need.

Yes, we do occasionally get the bad seed but they don't last long because EVERYBODY knows and complains.

We strongly encourage residents to do for themselves and have tons of activities every day. There is also a common room with a huge hi-def TV and lots of areas for residents to get together and socialize. It is wonderful watching a deaf resident with dementia wheeling through the room and waving at the other residents and grabbing their hands and kissing them.

Families can be a pain that is for sure. A lot of them blame the home for what is happening to their loved ones. Others don't even bother to show up until the resident has died and then stand in the room fighting over who gets what. Others are just wonderful and come in everyday, sit in the wheelchairs and wheel around the room talking to all the other residents.

I agree that there are some places that are horrible. The first job I had was in a facility where they lined up all the residents against a wall and just left them there all day. They charged them for every depends, every ounce of O2, every tube of toothpaste, every dressing change, everything. I know that somehow residents get charged for all that but it is so much more dignified if it's just built into the bill, not sent as an itemized list to the family each month. I quit that job under very bad terms after a few weeks.

Working in LTC takes a strong stomach and it can take a while to get used to but there really are decent places out there. And if you find one I can guarantee you that it is an incredibly rewarding experience.

I work in a nursing home and yes I also disagree with what was said I am a cna and I love the people in our home. The sad part about nursing homes is for the most part most are there living out their last years and thank God for those who work in the homes and can give them this care. To me the worst part of my job is when they die because I know we cry and mourn the loss we become attached and look forward to seeing them every day. I just hope that anyone who reads this post whom may have a loved one in a LTC knows that their family member is being taken care of and loved by those who are working there.

hollyster

355 Posts

I am a half a year away from graduating. I will have to say i agree with this girl. The majority of nursing home nurses are garbage, absolute garbage. I have been a paramedic for four years now, so as you can expect I visit a nursing home about more than 5-6 times a week while working two 24 hour shifts. I have seen those idiot nurses do everything from filling up the patients mouth with denture cream so it occludes there airway, and about once a week we will get a call for "someone turned blue" and when I go to intubate them, all i see is there trachea is blocked by eggs's that the nurse decided that she will keep jamming down the patients throat. Don't get me wrong though some nurses try, they will put on a nasal cannula and give the patient 15L of o2, or even do the opposite, and this happens alot, they will put on a nonrebreather and give 4L of o2 and i will have to pry the mask off the patients face cause it is stuck to them and suffocating them. Also, never try to help out the paramedics by putting in a 24 gauge IV in the patients AC for a hypoglycemic patient while we are walking in the door and "wasting" the only good site the patient has because there is now way in hell i' slamming D50 in a 24 or am i gonna adminster adenocard in a 24. Again if your too lazy to change the patient before we arrive don't change them at all, i'm not going to sit there on scene and waste time while you wipe ***. By the way don't be jealous we can intubate, surgical crich, place chest tubes and give meds, all by ourselves and all with out a doctors order.

These comments as well as your other post seem intended only to inflame. Please leave out the attacks and generalizations about Nurses. Although I have never worked in a nursing home, I have as a medic been to quite a few and have seen how hard the staff works. Sometimes they have 20 pts with one RN and yes there are as in any profession, such as a medic who tries to intubate without clearing the airway first, some inept staff they on the whole manage to provide quality care. As a medic you only have one pt at a time, if you had more than one pt there would be multiple units and personnel on the scene.

As for being jealous, a lot of Nurses are medics and we have had to deal with the hostility from both sides because of the completely ignorant comments such as your post.

How could you have been a medic for four years if you are only 21? You would have not even had been old enough to take the boards.

redwinggirlie

559 Posts

Wow. Even with these responses, the original poster has not made another appearance to comment. I wish they would, given the variety of responses here. I do not work in a nursing home. I work in a hospital. However....

If we are to keep going with the nursing home side of nursing, there are many ways of looking at it. I am a nurse. I have visited friends in nursing homes. Aside from the fact that many places are understaffed, the common thread for me is I don't see family coming in. I don't see community services visiting and checking. I don't see volunteers.

Thus, the down-headed blank staring people, or the terms the original poster stated. I believe in many ways, the feelings the original poster is regarding is their responses to their own realization of, and the families' own guiltiness of not paying attention to theirown. Nurses, CNA's, techs and anyone in the nursing home facility, I give my heart to you. You are there. For the most, many of you do the absolute best. Be well.

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