Some of the problems with Nursing Homes here in the US is that the Staff are not properly trained, nor properly equipped to care for the Seniors in their care. The Homes are run by Corporations that are only interested in profit, and very often the Seniors suffer, and die while in their care.
Seems like every week or so I see a report about a Home where the conditions were deplorable and the Seniors were suffering.
More than 2,200 have died of coronavirus inside nursing homes ...
www.foxnews.com/us/
nursing-
home-
deaths-
coronavirus
As of Friday, more than half of
New York’s 613 licensed
nursing homes had reported coronavirus infections, with 4,630 total positive cases and 1,439
deaths, the Times reported.
Coronavirus Nursing Home Deaths: 29, or More, Dead at One ...
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/nyregion/new-york-nj...
The crisis at Sapphire highlights not only the desperate state of
nursing homes in the
New York region, which have become a center of the
coronavirus outbreak, with nearly 2,500
deaths in New York...
A couple of the Reports out there today
I was once an RN, and have worked in Nursing Homes. The pay for NH RNs is deplorable, too. Which meant in my case, by far most of my work was in large hospitals. There are very good nurses, very bad nurses, and most lie somewhere between. In a hospital setting, seven or eight patients keep a nurse busy an entire shift - keeps one running if they are conscientious.
As the years went by and nursing skills grew more complex, their documentation was greatly increased, and their help, in the form of nurse aids, were greatly decreased. My patients all thought I was one of the good ones, and requested me - it was unusual when one did not. I became the nurse one large hospital sent to problem units where there were many complaints, to turn them around. Often that unit would go from most complaints to most compliments in two or three weeks.
It's all about hard work, teamwork, and leadership - it is surprising how fast people will sign on when they see their leader working hard, alongside them in the trenches. Many nurses lack the kind of leadership skills needed, unfortunately. And they get very little help. My wife, also an RN, retired last year - she was the primary resource for newer, less-skilled nurses at a large NH, where she worked one floor - fifty patients - with one LPN to give meds by mouth, and two aids. In theory. The reality was that she'd usually have two floors, two LPNs, and two or three aids - but also often had three floors - one hundred-fifty patients. It's ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the trend has been for RNs to think of themselves primarily as assessors - and assessment is an important part of nursing. But RNs are coming out of schools these days with the idea that they have a paperwork job dealing with assessment, especially with NHs. and lock themselves in an office for an entire shift. They don't even see the patient. We old hands call that "assessing the charts," and "follow-the-leader" rather than actually assessing the patient, and is not at all helpful to anyone except the NH corporation who have excellently-filled-out forms to display to state officials when the dreaded "State comes in." As a result, reports in those forms were often highly inaccurate, as nurse after nurse regurgitated the assessment of the former, and often missing major changes in the patient's condition.
Hospitals call RNs licenses, as in "We need a license on Six SouthEast," heard in the flurry of a shift change in the Staffing Department as they shifted us around to get coverage. I'd get my entire shift planned - had my own prep - and get called a half-hour later by Staffing, sending me to a whole different area to start over, and that lost half-hour made the whole shift one of playing catch-up.
So to them, one license is as good as another regardless of work ethic, years of experience (or lack thereof), leadership skills, communication skills - "just graduated school, first job, finished Orientation yesterday? We need her to charge the Cardiac Unit."
Gone seem to be the time when an RN acted as patient advocate at the risk of raising the ire of the corporation from which they get their pay. Gone also seem to be the hands-on RN who actually takes care of the patient. Not really. There yet remain those who care and those who do; they just seem fewer and further between.
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