What in hell is the buzz about Culture Change?

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Culture change in a nursing home.  So what the hell is it?

My nursing home books point out the horrors of those places, it's true.  But I also touch on Culture Change and the fact that all nursing homes could, and should, embrace Culture Change and every one of them can make at least some changes anyway and some is better than none.

Culture Change is not a big mystery, nor is it anything that would cost the traditional nursing homes an arm or a leg.  Let's first look at why traditional nursing homes are not really any one's home.  Yes, people may live there, but then people live in prisons and jails and yet none of the inmates would say they are home.

Traditional nursing homes were designed after the Medical Model.  Now we can, right off the bat, understand why that model is not conducive to oozing with a 'homey' feel.  Who wants to go to a hospital, much less live in one?  I dare say few, if any do.

One of the more obvious problems in traditional nursing homes is the elephant in the middle of the living room.  In this case, it's the obtrusive nursing station.  It takes up a good share of the hallway where residents who use wheel chairs, canes or just plain find it difficult to navigate anyway, have to go around making just one more obstacle for those having problems navigating, get past that monstrosity.  Besides hogging most of the hallway, the counter sits up pretty high, forcing residents to 'look up' at the nurses.  This 'looking up' already emits the 'I'm higher than you are' feeling, making residents feel inferior right off the bat.  Imagine being in a wheel chair and feeling even lower than those who walk.  Not pleasant.  Get rid of those stations in my way!

Two residents to a room...........do you or I make a habit of sharing our bedrooms with a complete stranger, in all forms of undress?  No, I know I do not.  Even in a dorm room, the students probably don't walk around naked in front of their room mates.  Two to a room means HIPPA laws are a joke.  If I have visitors and the nurses and doctors are visiting my room mate, well, with only a flimsy curtain separating us, I will know a good share of my room mate's medical status and probably a good share of her medications too.  HIPPA laws are supposed to protect our information.  But, apparently nursing homes do not have to.

Two people to a room means one of us cannot have the freedom of looking outside whenever we want to.  Only the window person gets that luxury. (Thank you ever so much greedy nursing home owners.)  Do not be fooled into thinking two to a room means you get to choose who you want to room with.  Oh no.  If a facility is full, you will get shoved in with whomever the nursing home pleases, simply to fill to capacity and make them more money.  They may care about your preferences way down the road, but it might be after a few nights, weeks or months of a miserable room mate who is not compatible with you at all. 

Many times nurses will dispense medications at meal times.  Listen, there is a reason doctors prescribe certain medications to be taken at certain times.  Medication dispensing is not a one size fits all deal.  No, it should be given to the individual at the prescribed times.  Maybe meal time is not the prescribed times either.

While we are on medications, that med cart outside, in the hallway, has everyone's name and medications prescribed written in it.  If I visit Aunt Gertie, well, while a nurse is with a person in their room, I can flip through that med book and see what anyone else is taking and why.  Again, HIPPA laws just flew out the window.  

Do you have any habits at home that give you pleasure?  Maybe wearing that ratty old sweatshirt you got 10 Christmas's ago and it is full of holes and faded.  Well if you choose to wear that damned thing in a traditional nursing home, and if nurses argue with you about giving it up, if you disagree, it will now be a behavior, a habit to be broken.  Why?  No one comes to our homes to tell us how to dress.  Why should they get away with it now?  If I'm 65, 75, 80 or 90, have I suddenly become three years old in the staffs' estimation?  Yes, that is about the size of it.  WRONG!  

While this blog points a number of what's wrong in traditional nursing homes, making all of us scared stiff about going to one, we will discuss the Culture Change models.  We will see why those Culture Change models have to turn down applicants because they actually want to live there.  

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to give any suggestions or share ideas on my blogs.  All are very welcome to do so.  

Sex, at any age, we all think about it

Nursing homes definitely are not places people ordinarily
think of anyone ever desiring sex, much less having
any. More elderly, even in nursing homes, not only
think about sex, they desire it but are usually
deterred from thinking about it and definitely
denied it, if staff has anything to say about it.

Most staff in nursing homes think older people
having sex is disgusting and all old people who
want sex must be perverts. It is expected that when
old people enter a nursing home to live, they will
automatically become eunuchs, understanding that
sex should be parked outside the doors and is a privilege
only for the young, or at least, only for old people
who live outside in the community.

To nursing home staff, finding an empty room for To nursing home staff, finding an empty room for
people to engage in a sexual act, means having to
clean a room that was already clean, and best left
that way, in other words, more work for them. To
corporations and owners, an empty room set aside
for such purposes means a room not producing
money 24/7 because it is empty.

This is almost like living in a concentration camp,
minus the torture, unless you count the harsh words
from staff as torture, maybe to some it is. Entering
a nursing home means giving up all pleasures,
except for those sanctioned by the facility. 

Perhaps there needs to be brochures that not only tell of the
benefits of living in a nursing home, but also list
the former pleasures you have to give up. Or
maybe it would suit their marketing department if
the brochure listed the pleasures sanctioned by the nursing home.  


Bingo is okay, looking out the window, reading, watching TV but *sigh* not sex!  OMG!

Well to Babyboomers, this is just unacceptable.  They come from a history of: "If it feels good do it............free love...........etc.

I read once that Boomers living in retirement communities are a large portion of those contracting AIDS.  Not sure how true the statistics are, after all, the same article said seniors abuse alcohol more than most too.  Oh yes, and drugs, but I think they were talking marijuana so to Boomers that is also a part of their normal history.  But, you don't get AIDS playing shuffleboard either.  

Sex is normal, and it is not something seniors need to be protected from, like we protect teens who have never had sex......unless it is a violent crime...........but consensual sex is something they do think about and even enjoy.

Seniors are not teenagers who need protection from sex.  Most of them have had sex at one time or another in their lives.  So adult kids who cannot stand the idea of their elderly parent having sex...........really should get a grip on reality and get over it. 

• Assisted Living Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/assisted-living/

• Memory Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/memory-care/

• Nursing Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/nursing-homes/

• Care Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/care-homes/

• Independent Living Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/independent-living/

Let's talk about death squads

I'm the first one to admit how much I hate politics
and I hate having to play stupid political games,
especially in the workplace. But of all the places
I've worked in my lifetime, I've never had to play
more political, bull shit games, than I did as a
Social Services person in a nursing home setting.

In fact, if nursing home Administrators were as
concerned about the residents living there as much
as they were about those political games, even
traditional nursing homes would be better places to
live. In my book, politics has no place in a nursing
home where it simply messes up peoples lives and
makes no sense at all.

Recently many people have been quite upset over the public health care debate because certain
factions in the debate seem to be fixated on what
some have dubbed ‘death squads.’ The death squad
debate seems to stem from some people thinking it
will be mandatory for physicians to have end of life
discussions with elderly patients. If this is what
some people consider death squads, then nursing
homes in America have already been acting as such
death squads, it is simply that no one noticed or
cared, until we started to debate public health care.

If Americans think President Obama has placed
stipulations in his health care proposal about ‘death
squads’ because they think it will be mandatory for
older people to discuss end of life plans with their
doctors, then nursing homes have always fit this
description.
 
Staff members in the nursing homes, where I've worked, were always approaching me to ‘discuss
end of life, or Hospice plans’ with the elderly and
their families. It seems nursing home staff eventually do get tired of sending elderly people to the ER when they become ill because ‘the ER says
they cannot do anything more for them anyway’ as
the reasoning goes.
 
Unfortunately they are correct because Emergency Room personnel will only do so much and
apparently feel time and life saving efforts are
‘wasted’ on very old, very frail people. The
problem, when the elderly decide to get hospice
services, is Medicare will not pay for any more
room and board in a nursing home, so families have
to pay out of pocket for their loved one to stay in
the nursing home, which can be a significant cost.

I recall one of our residents who had a very sedentary  lifestyle, sitting her chair all day long, a fondness for sweets and she was over weight.  One morning I came to work to find out she was dead.  It seems she had diabetes, the kind where you should be on insulin.  Apparently those lovely nursing home nurses and doctors never saw fit to give her a blood sugar test.  She went into a diabetic coma and died all in one night.

Another lady was experiencing acute heart burn every evening when she tried to sleep.  Her husband kept telling the nurses, who, in turn, ignored his pleas.  Finally one of the nurses said she would give her an antacid each evening.  Well, well, a few night later that lady was rushed to the ER and suffered a massive coronary and died.  Even I know that acute heart burn can mean a pending heart attack.  But, hell, when people get old, no one seems to think they need quality health care.

So my advice: STOP believing all the BS you have been told by those who hate the idea of health care for all.  I think it can only improve on an already bad medical system that charges huge amounts of money while killing people in droves, especially the elderly, without batting an eye.  

 

Both available on:

Amazon.com

 

Some of the loveliest pictures on aging

You don't get much more beautiful in life than this!  Age well and have the time of your life!  You are all beautiful and unique.

• Assisted Living Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/assisted-living/
• Memory Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/memory-care/
• Nursing Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/nursing-homes/
• Care Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/care-homes/

• Independent Living Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/independent-living/

This must be said

I think the anonymous blogger in the news who ranted about school lunches is commendable. However, just like when I attended Social Work classes, the news is about kids,what they eat and so on.In college, young students said:"I want to help kids, that's so worthwhile."  Really? It seems in our society kids are a more worthwhile endeavor. 
 When I was in public school we were served gooey french toast, fatty macaroni and cheese, hot dogs until they came out our ears.  Cake and ice cream for desserts, pizza, and pizza burgers.  Were we fat?  Nope. We got off our asses and went outside, rode our bikes and mom and dad had to yell at us to come in when it was dark.  We exercised it off, no video games,no sitting in front of a TV shoveling chips and soda pop into our faces.


So this brings me to how we worry about our kid's meals at school.  Blame everyone but the parents allowing those fat kids to sit and sit.  But when it comes to the elderly,we can shove mom or dad,grandma or grandpa into impersonal nursing homes because 'someone else must care for them.' 


I've written a book concerning this subject,but,alas,the elderly just don't concern much of society or TV talk show hosts.  Shame on America.  But for those who do care, I am listing some great literature concerning alternatives to nursing home care.  I sincerely hope people will check this information out and once again,give a damn about the elderly.  We have become one ungrateful nation to treat our elderly loved ones so shamefully.




 • Assisted Living Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/assisted-living/

• Memory Care Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/memory-care/
• Nursing Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/nursing-homes/
• Care Home Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/care-homes/

• Independent Living Guide: http://assistedlivingtoday.com/p/independent-living/

The aim with these guides is to help people faced with deciding what type of care to choose for a loved one make the best possible decision. 

Growing old and counting

Soon I will be giving a presentation at the college where I graduated as an undergrad.  I'm looking forward to it and I hope to help students, soon to be graduating, understand what they are up against,should they work with the elderly.


I hope I do well and I hope I can get a grassroots movement going to bring Culture Change to every nursing home in America.  That is my aim.