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Title: Working in a Nursing Home
Source:
Unclebob's Treehouse
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Published: Sep 30, 2010
Author: Bob Wallace
Post Date: 2010-09-30 10:46:17 by Turtle
Keywords: None
Views: 186
Comments: 3
I spent a total of almost 14 months working in nursing homes. All were eye-openers. The first clue a nursing home needs improvement is that when you walk in it smells like urine. It’s a really common flaw. The second is underpaid CNAs – the administration tries to get by paying them $9 - 9.50 an hour. And, of course, you get what you pay for. CNAs should make $14 an hour – after all, they deal every day with fragile elderly people with Alzheimer’s, some of whom are in horrendous shape. One guy I remember in particular was Stage 3 Alzheimer’s, meaning he was essentially asleep all the time – couldn’t speak, or feed himself, and was incontinent. Such people are permanently comatose, in a vegetative state. He was also diabetic and had no legs. He did nothing more than lie in bed 24 hours a day except when he was put on a cart and showered. The nurses make twice what the CNAs do, even though they do little more than push their carts down the hall handing out pills. Generally, the worst nurses end up in nursing homes, although not always. The CNAs do 95% of the work in the place. I assume management makes twice what the nurses do. They are of course top-heavy, don’t do any work than I can discern, and I’m sure delude themselves they are indispensible. For some reason I don’t understand work often seeks the lower-paid levels, unless the person owns the business. A doctor or dentist in private practice does most of the work, and so makes more money than his workers. But in bigger business management, most of whom could be fired and no one would miss them, make the most money and do almost no work. Having lots of black girls working there is another problem. Many are good, but many of them are too rough on the residents. I once walked by a room and saw a black CNA roughly putting a resident to bed. I stopped and watched, then walked on. A few minutes later the CNA called the nurse because of a skin tear. Old people’s skin is sometimes like tissue paper – you can tear it with your fingers. The CNA tore this woman’s skin on her calf. The nurse bandaged it, but sometimes they never heal. And that tear was caused by the CNA tossing this woman around. About a week later I found a skin tear on the same woman’s arm. The blood doesn’t even really form a crust – it’s more like it congeals. I told the nurse, but she never looked at it and never bandaged it. Another red flag is the CNAs and nurses hiding outside to smoke cigarettes. Every day I came to work I’d drive around back, and every time there were CNAs out smoking by the dumpster. Every time. Every hall should have three CNAs on it, not two. One guy, who had just turned 80, was permanently in a wheelchair because he had no thighbone in his left thigh. He wore diapers (nearly every resident in a nursing home wears diapers). This guy had been a paratrooper in Korea and had two Purple Hearts and one Bronze Star. Because of his lack of a thighbone, we had to use what is called a Hoyer lift on him – he was put in a sling and hosted into bed. Even though one person could operate the lift, the policy was there had to be two CNAs in the room. So, if two could not be found, this guy had to sit until he crapped in his pants. So sometimes, I’d just close the door and use the lift to hoist him into bed. If I had been caught, I would have been fired. I asked this guy how many times he had gone in his diapers because of the shortage of help. He said he’d lost count. Nursing homes speak of “dignity” and “safety.” They’re all empty words. What’s so dignified about a man crapping his pants because the place won’t hire enough help? Then there is the shower room. The residents are taken into the shower room, stripped, put into a chair – the kind that is also a toilet seat – and sprayed. That is their shower. I’ve stripped many an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s and showered them. They don’t want a shower. They protest and cover their chest with their hands. I told the administration I wanted to give them a bed bath – put towels on them and uncover one part at a time, then cover it up. No dice. We once had four falls in one week. Again, a shortage of help. One had a broken hip, which for an elderly person is sometimes the kiss of death because they won’t heal. Falls are the number one cause of death among the elderly. One got a bump on her head and her daughters showed up cursing everyone and threatening lawsuits. All nursing homes are supposed to use what are called gait belts. It’s a belt that is wrapped around the resident’s waist. It can be used to catch them if they fall. I only saw one used – another reason we had four falls in a week. We received one resident from who knows where. She was about 90 years old, paralyzed on one side, and had a broken hip on the other. Being so old, the hip could not be operated on, so it was untreated. She was, of course, bed-ridden. All she did was lie in bed, all twisted up, and cry, “Help me, help me.” She wanted pain medication. The nurses told me she had her daily dosage. Six times a day I’d adjust her, trying to make her comfortable. She told me once, “I hate this place.” She asked me not to leave her. She was of course hospice. She was going to lie in that bed, alone, until she died. I sometimes wondered how she got that broken hip. Being paralyzed, she could not walk. This means somebody, somewhere down the line, had dropped her on her hip. Another nursing home, maybe? So she was shuffled into ours? Another red flag is no male CNAs. Some places have nothing but women. Of course, with more men, they’d have to pay higher wages. Oh, the horror! Also look for a place that has a bird cage, a fish tank, and if they can, resident cats and dogs. If they don’t have at least one of those, avoid the place. Most of the residents are put to bed in nothing more than a hospital gown – the kind open in the back – and a diaper. Why? Those hospital gowns are cheap. Most had permanent knots in the tie strings. I untied many a gown with my teeth. I have now decided to open my own healthcare service so I can do things the right way. If you ever have to put someone in a nursing home, now you know the red flags that tell you to avoid it.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
Good luck in this venture. Be prepared for state.gov and fed.gov to literally drown you in paperwork, rules, and sometimes insane regulations that you'll have to abide by.
Nursing home administrators get a huge year-end bonus if they can keep costs down (balanced against their budget). Shorting the facility on staff is the #1 way to ensure this bonus. They'd rather the residents suffer than to pay a higher wage in order to be choosy about the qualifications of the people they hire. I've got over 8 years of dealing with this never-ending worry, it eats at me day and night and has caused me more depression than is healthy for anybody to take on.
__________________________________________________________ Actually, that's not true. In my area alone there are 70 of them, and most are Mom and Pop. It's a growing field, probably the only one in the U.S. these days.
“In the world we have the Baddie-Do-Badders and the Goodie-Do-Gooders. More often than not it is the Goodie-Do-Gooders who cause the most harm to themselves and their fellow human beings.”
#2. To: Turtle (#0)
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?"
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#3. To: Lod (#1)
Be prepared for state.gov and fed.gov to literally drown you in paperwork, rules, and sometimes insane regulations that you'll have to abide by.
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