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:

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Nursing home blogs don't fly?

I guess blogs concerning nursing homes don't fly so well, although my nursing home books are still my best sellers.

I haven't a clue why they aren't popular, but I do know, in college, students were just looking forward to working with kids and families.  It seemed like a more worthwhile endeavor I suppose.

Well, elderly people have families too and they are a worthwhile endeavor. 

Fixing nursing homes:  We can fix them by:
1) Get nursing stations out of the hallways
2) Stop making people share rooms with virtual strangers
3) Use medicine cabinets, and give medications at the proper times, not to everyone because it's convenient for staff
4) Have more staff, less psychotropic medications, this is much more cost effective, even for nursing home owners, happiness does not come from a bottle, it comes from quality of life.
5) Listen to the residents, don't blow smoke up their asses or even their family's asses, it's undignified
6) Treat the residents as individuals, not like some human cattle to be herded to meals, activities, etc.
7) Offer choices when it comes to meal times too, not just what is cheaper for the facility

God knows these are not the only ways to improve nursing homes, but it's a good basic start any facility can do, right now.  


• 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/

Ahhhhhhhh Nursing Home Corporations

In order to be competitive, nursing homes offering a Culture Change environment, will find the list for people who actually want to live there will be long. Most people will flock to a facility that resembles their home, not some hospital.

It’s true, it will be hard for the elderly to maybe have to move, but moving to a nursing home that treats them right is a plus, not a bust. Certainly I have seen nursing homes forcing residents move anyway, for the nursing home’s convenience, so it is not as if residents have not been forced to move before, it is just that, maybe now, the moves will be for the better, for the improvement of their welfare and not at the whim of nursing home staff.

Elder care has become increasingly more competitive, like any other business. Baby Boomers are not willing, like the generation before them that was willing to simply conform and settle for rules and regulations of the ancient facilities. It’s time for a change and perhaps Medicare will be the catalyst to usher in some of the new changes.

While working in a nursing home I already knew the MDS, the instrument nursing homes and Medicare use to be able to justify the Medicare reimbursement money, has been redesigned to supposedly implement big changes. The changes are to, hopefully, make the MDS less generalized, sort of one size fits all mentally, to reflect much more individuality for each resident.

This is supposed to reflect a single resident’s personal challenges and needs much more than generic criteria that have been used, in my opinion, far too long to deliver good services to our nation’s elderly population.

Maybe the new Medicare cut backs will eventually help keep more nursing homes honest.

For far too long many facilities have, in my opinion, used Medicare to cheat the federal government out of tax monies, simply because the nursing home was able to slap a nursing home sign on their doors. Maybe this will also force facilities to have to train their nurse aides better to be able to deliver better services, since nurse aides have always been the primary care givers there. It is a popular belief, in traditional nursing homes, that treating people like humans with rights and with dignity, must be more expensive, not true.

If money were the only answer, then residents in a nursing home would be treated like kings and queens and be living in a palace. I have seen the money Medicare and residents pump into nursing homes, money that lines the pockets of a CEO or a COO and buys corporate mansions complete with swimming pools and expensive vacations. I have seen it even buying huge meeting halls and fabulous buildings called corporate offices. But I have not seen it buying a wonderful final chapter in the lives of the older people who have made the corporate head’s life wonderful.

Are the corporate heads the only ones entitled to a nice life, a life provided for them by riding the backs of older American’s miseries?

I have also seen the big money that buys the heads of pharmaceutical companies the same luxuries. It's not uncommon for a pharmacy charging older people, especially in a nursing home, $100 per pill simply because it is in the pharmacy’s best interest to prolong a life that pays $100 per pill and residents are forced to use the in-house pharmacy.

These are older people, who as a captive audience, have to sign agreements to buy medicine, while in the nursing home, from the company pharmacy because it is simply their policy under the guise that it is for the old person’s own good to do so, or that a corporation has their best interest at heart.

Traditional nursing homes are places where misery and despair come home to roost like chickens in early evening on a farm. People go to war these days and are called heroes, yet once they too are old, all of that will be forgotten until a few shovels of dirt cover their coffins and if they are lucky, when old, they will be able to live life out in their own homes, but probably not.

I look around a traditional nursing home and I see an old man slumped in a chair, a man whose parents probably once loved him and nurtured him.  A man who probably loved his children and nurtured them, who now needs some assistance with everyday tasks that we, in our younger years, take for granted.