How often do you give showers at your facility? Ours get them once a week, which I think it not enough.
I wish they would make it twice a week and put one more CNA one the floor of each wing just for the showers. First of all I feel bad that these people only get a shower once a week and it's over in all of 5 minutes. But as it is now we usually have one shower on each assignment for the evening shift, and I think 2 would be too much. They are such a pain in the A to squeeze in since they're one at a time (and there are so many stupid rules about when we can do it), and I hate getting all hot and slimy and frizzed out. Sometimes we have a CNA floating between 2 wings and they'll do all the showers and it's so nice not to have to leave the floor or tell someone repeatedly that they can't go to bed because they have a shower at 7pm and you weren't allowed to give it earlier.
I wouldn't mind having the "shower assignment" once every week or so if it meant I could skip them the rest of the time.
How many showers do you do on your shift? Do you have shower aides?
I work in an extended care unit in a hospital and everyone gets a bath/shower/bedbath everyday unless they refuse. We do a lot of rehab so a lot of are patients are to do their own bath for therpy. When I worked at the nursing home they got a shower twice a week unless they needed one before that or they refused.
At the LTC facility I work in we give our residents baths/showers twice a week, also. There have been a few cases where they were given three, because some people are just a bit smellier, ya know?
We devide all the showers up into 3rds, and first shift takes 2/3 and second shift takes 1/3. The CNAs are rotated (2 on first shift, 1 on second) through out the month to do nothing except baths. Its really nice for everyone, baths tend to be more relaxed the working the floor, etc.
It did kind of bother me that residents didnt get more the 2 a week when I first started working LTC, but then I realized how often we have to practically BEG THEM to take only those two. The generation these residents lived in was a lot different then most of ours, and it was perfectly exceptable to only bathe once a week. Ive even heard some stories from residents where their parents only bathed once a YEAR!
Yeah, that's very true. And when you consider how many times those people probably get washed up in a day (when people are doing their jobs, that is!) and how they really don't do that much to get sweaty/dirty otherwise, it's not that bad. If I'm ever in a nursing home, I don't imagine I'll want a bath everyday either.
Wow.. color me astonished! At every nursing home/LTC facility I have ever worked at (admittedly not in the US), we showered patients every day, unless there was a reason not to. Once a week? Geez.
Wow.. color me astonished! At every nursing home/LTC facility I have ever worked at (admittedly not in the US), we showered patients every day, unless there was a reason not to. Once a week? Geez.
Showering everyday can cause extreme dryness in the skin of elderly people leading to breakdown, skin tears and general discomfort. That why the typical resident gets 2 showers a week.
1 shower a week is strange and I have never seen a place that does that.
Some people CAN tolerate more showers and the 'dirtier' people tend to get more.
Yeah, I have serious skin dryness issues NOW, so I can only imagine how it will be when I' m older. Wash up every day? Sure. Daily shower? Probably not. I do think that people who desire daily showers should be able to get them (well, assuming there is adequate staffing), but not everyone wants or requires that.
Also, in two of the nursing homes I have worked in, there have been just one "shower room" per hall. Therefore, showering there turned into a big production, and many of the residents refused showers more often there. I don't blame them.
Where I'm working now, each room has a shower in its bathroom, and it's much less time consuming to get a resident in the shower.
In average nursing homes in my area though, I can't imagine any of them having adequate staffing for daily showers for everyone. As it is, most aides have at least 10-15 residents around here, and if you factor in a half hour for each shower (including dressing time, etc) then that leaves very little, if any, time for meals and toileting.
Showering everyday can cause extreme dryness in the skin of elderly people leading to breakdown, skin tears and general discomfort. That why the typical resident gets 2 showers a week.
Got a reference for some data about that? I would have assumed if you use appropriate skincare products that this is not an issue.
Got a reference for some data about that? I would have assumed if you use appropriate skincare products that this is not an issue.
Nothing other than my multiple 'inservice' papers. I am sure if you look hard enough or if someone here has a subscription to some of those article warehouses you can see some.
I did find some but you had to pay for them.
It however is quite obvious.
The natural oil produced by the human body is superior to lotion.
That and the reality that no nursing home, at least in America, much less a hospital has sufficient staff to ensure people do get showered everyday.
It would be preferable though to have enough staff on hand to ensure everyone was clean all the time with proper skin treatments everyday. :)
ETA:
Oh, I am talking about full out showering. Not the bathing that you give them every day or after incontinence.
I'm not sure if you're saying infequent showering is due to staffing shortages or concerns about resident skin condition.
However, I did look at the databases and can't find any data about this. I think it's a cop out. Obviously if someone has a medical reason (including something about their skin condition) that prohibits it, that's one thing. Simply not showering people more than once a week is gross, especially if they are incontinent.
In my humble opinion, of course. And I'm not blaming the nurses, obviously it's a staffing/administrative issue.
I became a CNA in the mid 80's and in every single facility I worked at, showers were given 1x/wk. However, each resident was washed up head to toe, lotion, teeth, etc every morning (a full bed bath minus washing hair). They also received PM care at bed time which consisted of face, hands, armpits, mouthcare and pericare. Giving a resident AM care where I've been is exactly the same as a full shower, with less water and with the exception of washing their hair, as I said. Pericare was also given each time the resident was toileted, changed and/or incontinent
Most of these residents, when living home, didn't shower every day. They are of a generation where daily showers weren't always the norm.
I was always told the same as Stanley, excessive showering washes away the bodies natural oils, which is a defense system of the skin. I too had hours and hours of inservicing on it. And while in school, we were also told that excessive showering wasn't good for the elderly skin. There is no body lotion that can compare to the bodys natural oils.
When I get some time, I;ll see if I can rustle up some "proof" that too much bathing does cause damage to the elderly's skin.
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Gabby_101, BSN
89 Posts
I work in an extended care unit in a hospital and everyone gets a bath/shower/bedbath everyday unless they refuse. We do a lot of rehab so a lot of are patients are to do their own bath for therpy. When I worked at the nursing home they got a shower twice a week unless they needed one before that or they refused.