Coming out of Hibernation
Posted by Patti on November 29th, 2004 / Print This Post
I worked here all weekend-I call it hibernation because I work two back to back 16 hour shifts (6am to 10pm Saturdays and Sundays). Its like I don’t exist on weekends. I get up too early to see anyone, and get home too late to catch up on anything new and exciting. When I work my weekends, it’s like being LOST in the twilight zone. Come Mondays, I find myself catching up on everything going on with my family, friends and the world in general. We could be under a major attack and I seriously doubt I would know about it.
Anyway as I was surfing about the net, trying to catch up on news and other exciting things- I came across this post at the Hospice Blog. This is about nursing home residents recieving hospice services. Having worked in a nursing home with residents who were in the process of dying, I can say without question I DO think the services are needed. I was never able to spead enough time with terminally ill residents.
Should hospices be allowed to care for (read: paid for) patients in a nursing home? I can not emphasize how much I believe they should. Somewhat by definition, a hospice patient requires more care than your typical nursing home patient, and if you’ve been in an average nursing home lately you know that the typical nursing home patient doesn’t get the care they need. Nursing homes are understaffed and generally the best homes provide adequate care at best. We won’t even talk about the bad homes. Now, if the staff of the home is stretched thin on a normal day, what happens when a patient needs extra attention? Either that patient doesn’t get it, or some other patient in the building is neglected so that the special needs patient can be cared for. This is where hospice earns it’s money. They provide the care that the terminally ill patient needs with more skill than the nursing home staff could or would, and allows that staff to continue to do their job. There is no doubt in my mind that hospice is a good thing for nursing home patients. Hospice workers are experts in caring for the terminally ill. If someone with a terminal illness resides in a nursing home, they should have access to the experts.
December 1st, 2004 at 7:27 am
I work for a home health agency that provides Hospice care. We have had a few patients who were residents of assisted living and nursing homes. It is true that these ones need more care than the other patients. I worked part time in a nursing home on the weekends and we had a patient who was dying. I told the RN in charge that he wouldn’t live through the night and they should call his family in. She just laughed and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. (of course I’m ONLY a lowly CNA, but I do have 12 years experience working with terminally ill Patients.) Well, the man died at 2 am that night with no one with him. What an awful way to die and they did not even give his family a chance to be there. When I arrived at work on Sunday the RN told me, “I wish I had listened to you yesterday.” I told her they would be fortunate if the family didn’t sue them for not letting them know how bad he had gotten. Anyway, Hospice is a wonderful program and in a nursing home setting, it just releives the staff of some of the work involved in caring for the dying patient.
December 1st, 2004 at 3:54 pm
This is SO sad but it happens all the time. I have a per diem job at an AL place-we had a new nurse come to work there. Residents who were dying always had their family/frinds notified. This new nurse didn’t believe us aides when we told her what we thought…After 3 deaths, she finally caught on that we did indeed know what we were talking about…