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.  

Where's the logic?

We have been bombarded with pictures, news articles and opinions on social media sites of the recent shooting of innocent kids.  No, I cannot imagine the horror those parents, that school or the town is experiencing.  It must be absolutely horrible.

In 2006, Amish children in Pennsylvania were killed by a gunman who entered their school and also opened fire.  I have to be honest here and say, I really didn't see a whole lot of debate then about gun control.  Yet those Amish children are just as precious as any other.

Admittedly these are awful tragedies and many people in America think something should be done.  Are we now, as my Dad used to say: "Closing the barn door after the horse got out?"  Shouldn't something have been done much earlier to prevent such things?  You have heard of prevention, haven't you?

There is much inhumanity going on in the world that breaks my heart as well.  I also cannot imagine being blasted from by bed, in my home, in the middle of the night, in Iraq, by a country holding me accountable for something I never did.  Don't we need impulse control as a country too?

 

 

It seems so very easy to hate a faceless enemy.  Do we make war on innocent children, old people and innocent civilians and just sit by and say nothing?  Why?

There are innocent children, every year, in America, who live with the chance of being killed, every time they step out in their neighborhood streets.  Those kids who face the rain of bullets from drug running thugs who spray bullets in all directions in drive by shootings, killing anyone in their path.  Children murdered, children whose only crime is being poor and having to live in those neighborhoods.  I dare say if this was happening in affluent neighborhoods, there would be an outcry in America such as we have never heard before.

 

America has allowed huge corporations to take over our government, to run it, financially and otherwise.  Nothing gets done except a hatred for 'Americans not on their side' and a division in America that hasn't been seen since our Civil War.  Americans have allowed big businesses to go to other countries, make virtual slaves of workers, just so we can have cheap goods.  Americans have allowed corporations to look like they represent us, as citizens.  Making it look like all fat cat Americans use their people in foreign lands like so much trash.  Then we wonder why other countries would like to see our demise.  I don't know about you, but those companies do not represent me, not now, not ever.   Yet Americans think we should also pick up the tab for corporations lax in paying taxes.  We should pick up the tab for their health care, while we get none and mop up the messes those corporations leave behind, which I suspect is a lot of carnage for us to pay for.

Are we then also going to be willing to absorb the hatred they have instilled in other countries, making it look like we, innocent civilians, are backing the corporations?  America needs to think long and hard on that last question.