People every day around the world are making one of the hardest decisions in their lives. Deciding to put a loved one in a skilling care facility or also known as a nursing home. Many of them feel guilty about having to even make this decision. Society has a stigma of nursing homes. That once you put your loved one in one that is it for them. Grandma will sit there and do nothing but eat, sleep, and one-day die. However, I have worked in a skilled care facility for two years now. Contrary to what many people think a nursing home is alive with action! I want to clarify the misconception of a nursing home that it is more than just a place to put a loved one, so they can waste away to nothing. The misconception of nursing homes came from the …show more content…
According to NMHCA.org, the most common ones are nursing home residents never go home, they do not receive proper care, they have no privacy, and the most common one is residents are lonely. These are myths. I have worked at a skilled care facility for two years now, and my facilities are full of laughter and walkers. Many of my residents can drive, they go out every weekend to visit family or go to church, and surprisingly many of them have active sex lives. Nursing homes now offer activities and daily meal plans for the residents. There are monthly and daily activities for them to take part in, so they are always busy. This helps keep depression and loneliness down in the facility. Many residents come as a couple. Married couples can have a couple room and they have their privacy just as they would have at home. In my two years working as an aide I have seen more sexual encounters with the elderly that are not married than with the ones that are married. Elderly people have active relationships with each other in the facility. If both parties consent to it than it is perfectly normal for the elderly to have sexual …show more content…
They might have just had a knee or hip replacement, or they could need medical reminders on their medicine, they may have early onset dementia and they keep forgetting a simple task. Not everyone that comes to a facility is there against their will or they are in hospice care. Skilled care offers rehab, medical aid, and many other helpful resources for the people that live there. On senior care of Colorado’s website, they talk about the many reasons why skilled care facilities help everyone, not just the person who is in the facility. Putting a loved one in a home should be comforting and not scary. It should give the family a sense of hope and a sense of peace to know that their loved one is being treated well. The federal government has set laws and regulations for health care providers to ensure the best quality care for the people who are in facilities all over the world. There are very strict laws telling health care workers what they can do and what they cannot do. The federal government has also put in two laws called HIPPA and OSHA that protects resident’s rights. If a family member is ever in question about the resident's rights the facility should always have them on file, or they are available at ilcombudsman.org. The common stigma of a nursing home is far from the reality of what a nursing home is today. Overall, society has a misconception about nursing homes being a place where you throw your
Assisted Living Facilities abuse is a frequently occurring problem in our society (Hamilton). There are diverse categories of abuse that transpire in Assisted Living Facilities which are physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and financial abuse. Samples of physical abuse would be hitting or beating the elders with an object or their hand, force feeding them or pulling their hands. Sexual abuse is the Assisted Living Facility employees having sexual acts with non-consenting patients. Emotional abuse is the employees saying things verbally to torment the patient. Neglect would be the employee does not take care of the patients such as providing hygiene. Abandonment occurs when leaving patients to fend for themselves. Financial abuse is when the patient’s family pays for the services that were not taken care of. “Elder abuse is fast becoming one of the uppermost law enforcement tasks of the next century, “said Paul Hodge who investigates crime against the elderly (Gonzalez). Since abuse occurs throughout assisted living facilities, state and federal governments should establish a type of punishment such as sending for employees to prison, ways to prevent abusing elderly’s is by inspecting employees ' criminal records, qualified staff, reporting injuries, having surveillance of the areas that do not affect patients privacy, promoting continuous family visits, and shortage of staffing.
I am a nursing student at Penn State University. I study diseases, and what they do to the body. I make flash cards to help me memorize the symptoms. This year I started my clinical rounds at a local nursing home. I had never seen a nursing home before. In my head, I pictured a hotel-like place, with old people rolling around in wheelchairs saying “good morning” to the nurses. I pictured a big room where they would go to play checkers and watch black and white films. I pictured a nursing home like they are depicted in movies. It was not like that. Many of the residents are no longer able to communicate. Many need help eating. Many are confused. There, I saw those small, flimsy flash cards come to life. I live a happy, healthy life alongside my happy, healthy family. I knew that there were diseases, and that the diseases can be terrible. But until this year, I had
Nursing homes offer a wide range of long-term care assistance for older adults to be able to meet their everyday needs. Older adults from different cultural backgrounds experience conflict with their decision to participate in a nursing home therefore, catalyzing the underlying stigma different cultures hold towards nursing homes. In many cultures, older adults look for family as their primary source for care. However, when their needs cannot be met due to disability and mental health issues, it begins to take a toll on the person’s instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). IADLs are complex daily actions that are needed to live (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2015). Thus, bringing the issues that
With over 1.5 million elderly and dependent adults now living in nursing homes throughout the country, abuse and neglect has become a widespread problem. Even though some nursing homes provide good care, many are subjecting helpless residents to needless suffering and death. Most residents in nursing homes are dependent on the staff for most or all their needs such as food, water, medicine, toileting, grooming- almost all their daily care. Unfortunately, many residents in nursing homes today are starved, dehydrated, over-medicated, and suffer painful pressure sores. They are often isolated, ignored and deprived of social contact and stimulation. Because of insufficient and poorly trained staff commonly found in nursing homes. Care givers are often overworked and grossly underpaid that often results in rude and abusive behavior to vulnerable residents who beg them for simple needs such as water or to be taken to the bathroom.
Taking care of the individuals that are getting older takes many different needs. Most of these needs cannot be given from the help of a family. This causes the need of having to put your love one into a home and causing for the worry of how they will be treated. It is important for the family and also the soon to be client to feel at home in their new environment. This has been an issue with the care being provided for each individual, which has lead to the need of making sure individuals have their own health care plan.
These facilities are regulated by the state and federal government and these regulations protects the senior residents. For example it is mandatory for the facilities in Texas to provide mandatory services such as daily living activities like dressing, feeding or help prepare meals and cleaning. Depending on the facility license the staff would have to assist with financial management and certain medical services. Even though the federal government developed guidelines the state can make their own as long as it complies with the federal government. Some organizations may accept private pay while others accepted Medicaid. Regulations are developed to protect residence that from being in an unsafe environment. As a result some assisted living and nursing homes are unable to continue services by having fines or closing for an unknown amount of time. Since each state has different set of regulations I will focus on the state regulations in Texas because it is the state I reside in. The organization in Texas that regulates assisted living and nursing homes is the Department of Aging and Disability services(DADS).
stereotypes and reinforcing the realities of aging as they care for older adults in all care
remaining sexually active at their age. Elders also have fears of remaining sexually active in
Not just in the hospital, but in any part of their in general. Often the older adult is seen as confused and forgetful, poor, chronically ill, frail or disabled, unfriendly and grumpy, deaf and blind, and dependent. Changing nursing views on this issue and not forming biases towards this population will improve the care provided. It is important to differentiate your personal views while working in the healthcare industry. You must be culturally sensitive and not pass judgement on your patients. Our attitudes are formed by our past experiences in different situations, but as professional nurses, it is time to change and be able to recognize and find ways to improve negative attitudes and stereotypes towards aging. Not only in the acute care setting, but also in the subacute and home setting. “Given the increasing number of older adults in health care settings, forming positive attitudes toward them and gaining specialized knowledge about aging and their health care needs are priorities for all nurses. It is critical for you to learn to respect older adults and actively involve them in care decisions and activities.” (Korem,
Assisted living (AL) is a type of living arrangement that provides assistance to residents with activities of daily living (ADLs), housekeeping, meals, and transportation. The three biggest challenges that AL facilities face with organizational performance include occupancy rates, safety, and staff. According to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC), the occupancy rate is continuing to fall nationwide for AL facilities due to inventory growth that outpaced healthy absorption rates (Holmes, 2017) (Bowers, 2017). Also, safety is a major issue for many AL facilities. According to the United States, Office of the Inspector General (OIG) 2014 report, safety is a major issue for many AL facilities, where more than half of incidents of possible abuse or neglect against AL residents were never reported to appropriate law enforcement and regulatory authorities despite the mandatory reporting law (Harrington et al., 2017). Additionally, nursing shortages are also a challenge for AL facilities;
Elder abuse and neglect in nursing homes is a growing concern, which must be addressed to help ensure the safety of the aging population.
and reported an occurrence of abuse towards a resident (Schiamberg & Colleagues, 2012). This study randomly selected participants for a phone survey from a list of individuals who had a loved one living in a nursing home (Schiamberg & Colleagues, 2012).). The participant sample included 452 older adults who were living in a nursing home (Schiamberg & Colleagues, 2012).). Family members reported that 110 of the older adult participants had experienced some form of physical abuse, which was almost twenty-five percent of the sample (Schiamberg & Colleagues, 2012).) Sexual and physical abuse are just two types of abuse that older adults in nursing homes could potentially experience. It is important that older adults feel safe and have the resources
Incidents involving nursing home residents are expected to increase with global population on the rise. More than 13% of the U.S. population is over the age of 65. Some nursing homes fail to meet the safety standards on site and at the expense of employees. Patients falling are a common accident inside nursing homes and account for 87% of all elderly fractures. Nursing home falls can lead to immobilization, which leads to more complications and financial issues.
While doing some research it was discovered that many assisted living residents are neglected and or abuse. Many have families that never come to see them or even call. Others only have visitors on special occasions. Residents only wish to see their loved ones, not to be alone is a home where the only people they talk to are the care givers who provide them care on a daily basis. Communication between the youth of today and the elderly is advancing into a new society. It is worry some too many residents that they may expire soon without getting to see their loved ones. If more families came to visit, there would be less depression of many residents. Playing games with the resident’s leads to less aggression
As we grow older and older parts of us as humans start to deteriorate. For example we may start forgetting simple things like the names of family member. Our hair turns gray we have a harder time hearing, a difficult time seeing, getting around and even doing the things which used to be easy in our daily lives. We’re stripped of basically everything we used to be before and suddenly society doesn’t see us the same anymore. Even our families don’t and when they finally decide that maybe it’s a better idea to just put elders in a old folks home because that specific elder can’t take care of themselves properly anymore. Honestly this seems like an excuse to me because that family could just as easily take that family member into their own hands and take care of them themselves. In the past there was no such thing as old folks homes and elders were indeed taken care of by their younger family member, but we as nation even world wide have strayed from that way of life. It’s easier to just let someone else take care of them that way we no longer have to worry. It is definitely most likely not a very easy transition for that elder they went from being able to control every aspect of their life to having absolutely no control which is wrong. They are in fact human beings just like the rest of us and should be able to experience personal rights such as freedom to choose their way of life. Elders across the United States are forces into old folks homes by their family it is wrong for them to be sent there it strips personal choice and de-humanizes them there should be an alternative.