We hear alot about the negative parts of the work we do- CNA’s.

But what about the positives? What is it that keeps us coming back everyday to endure this line of work?
Is it the patients, residents. clients?
Is it our co-workers?

We know it’s not the pay! And for the most part, we know it’s not for the bosses.
So what keeps us here??

This story is sad- and I’m not sure this is a bad idea. I am against lawsuits and similar- BUT- this facilty was obviously neglectful in it’s ability to keep track of it’s residents. In today’s world this is inexcusable. Modern nursing homes have Wander Guard systems to keep residents safe.

Tammy Terry remembers her mother as a woman who turned her love for animals into a successful dog-grooming business, a woman who never sat idle, who both worked on cars and sewed lingerie.

Terry prefers these memories to the other image that is etched indelibly in her mind: Her mom lying alone for four days in a dark storage room at Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

Just days earlier, Terry’s mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, had begged to come home. “I told my husband, ‘I want her moved. I want her closer to me,’” said Terry, 45, of Gastonia.

The daughter will live with her guilt for the rest of her life. Although she isn’t to blame for this incident- modern society can share some of the blame here. Back in the day people used to keep their parents home in their old age, and take care of them. This is just about unheard of today. People have “too much” going on for this.

She never got that wish. On Jan. 23, two days after Terry last saw her mom, 66-year-old Mary Hicks Cole went missing from Liberty. Four days later, Cole was found, dehydrated and sick with pneumonia, in a storage room on the same second floor where she was kept in an Alzheimer’s unit.

Cole died a half-hour later at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte. The state would find that conditions at Liberty presented immediate jeopardy to residents’ health and safety and would levy the heaviest possible fine — $10,000 a day — until the nursing home fixed the problems.

We recall this story and how shocked many of us were. It happens all the time though. Residents wander off, and if the facility has no policy in place to search and locate these missing, they end up dead.

Now, nearly six months later, Terry is on a mission to see that her mother’s death is paid for with more than a mere monetary offering. She’s pursuing a civil suit, but what she wants most is for someone in charge to take criminal responsibility for her mother’s death.

“It never should have happened,” Terry said last week, breaking down in tears after listening to the 911 call made after staff found her mother.

Terry has a reason to be upset and for wanting to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Whether a civil lawsuit is the answer here is up to each of us to decide. I would also take this issue further by reaching out to people- to nursing home management.
I would try to speak about the policies and procedures that could be put in place to prevent these incidents from happening in the first place. I believe this would be more effective.

I’ve worked in facilities where they have violent patients/residents. Especially those with Alzheimer’s disease. Question is- where do they place the violent residents if they cannot be with the non violent? Is there a better solution to all this- rather than lawsuits and fines and all that?

A Des Moines nursing home where an elderly female resident is alleged to have been beaten by a man with a history of violent behavior must pay a $2,000 fine, an administrative law judge has ruled.

Two years ago, Trinity Center at Luther Park, located at 1555 Hull Ave., was fined for failing to protect one of its residents from harm. The state alleged that a male resident entered the room of an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease and beat her, leaving her bruised, bloodied and screaming for help.

Videos don’t lie. Neither do people with Alzheimer’s disease- BUT- they live in a world made up of their own nightmares and delusions and in different time periods.

The nursing home appealed the $2,000 fine, which led to an appeal hearing at which a surveillance videotape the nursing home made was shown. The videotape shows the man entering the woman’s room and spending about 12 minutes inside. Shortly after the man exits the room, the woman emerges with blood on her face and yelling for help. She later told officials the man had come into her room, beaten her and left her for dead.

J.R. “Lynn” Boes, a lawyer for the nursing home, argued that the woman was probably the victim of a fall, not a beating. Lawyers for the state said the alleged attacker had a well-documented history of physical violence. When the man moved into Trinity Center five weeks before the incident, he was given a written care plan that included “will not injure peers” as a goal.

A well documented history doesn’t prove this man beat the woman. I would say something did happen- they got into an argument and she perhaps fell after. I really don’t know, and I suspect no one really knows.

The man allegedly struck Trinity Center workers and threatened another resident with a butter knife during his first three days at the nursing home. Immediately after the incident, the nursing home increased the man’s medication, assigned one-on-one supervision and tried to transfer him to a psychiatric unit.

We all have witnessed this stuff. It’s bad- newly admitted residents tend to have a really hard time adjusting to the nursing home environment. They get confused and are often scared. They view attempts for personal care as attacks. It sucks but it is the reality. What more could this facility do- they medicated him, gave him a 1:1 and tried to get him transferred. I have seen many times- the waiting lists for psych units are very long. Its not like we can just kick them out.

Administrative Law Judge Randy Stephenson recently recommended that the nursing home pay the $2,000 fine. He found that Trinity Center failed to supervise the alleged attacker and failed to protect the other residents of the nursing home. He also said the nursing home’s subsequent attempt to alter its own records to support an injury-from-falling theory was “suspect and self-serving.” The Department of Inspections and Appeals has approved Stephenson’s proposed order.

I guess you have to work in these places to have a true understanding of how it all works. To an outsider- a judge- it seems pretty black and white. It’s far from that.

SOUTH SUBURBS — The Illinois Department of Public Health has fined three south suburban nursing homes for alleged violations of the state’s Nursing Home Care Act.

Manorcare of Palos Heights, 7850 W. College Drive, a 174-bed skilled-care facility, was fined $25,000 for allegedly failing to provide adequate insulin treatment for a diabetic female resident who later had to be hospitalized, the agency said in a press release.

Prairie Manor Nursing & Rehab Center, 345 Dixie Highway, Chicago Heights, a 146-bed skilled-care nursing home, was fined $20,000 for allegedly failing to adequately supervise an 84-year-old female resident known to need assistance during meals. As a result, the woman spilled a cup of hot coffee on herself and sustained serious burns, the Health Department said.

Torrence Place, 2601 223rd St., Sauk Village, a 16-bed intermediate-care facility for the developmentally disabled, was fined $20,000 for allegedly failing to take steps to protect a mentally retarded 54-year-old resident who suffered burns, apparently during a bath.

More about how technology can help elderly residents.

Keeping an eye on your increasingly frail grandma or other elderly loved one could be getting a whole lot easier.

High-tech assisted living centers are all the rage, and now technology can help make your home more user-friendly and safer too, doctors and police say.

The American Geriatrics Society advocates two basic kinds of technology devices that can be used for elderly care — active-intervention devices that monitor vital signs and intervene when necessary, and passive-intervention devices that are computerized and observe patients’ safety without intervention.

According to Dr. Eric Tangalos, a member of the American Geriatrics Society in Rochester, Minn., so-called-smart technologies are a “new phenomenon that fill in the gaps and keep the elderly away from trouble.”

Tangalos said that many properly placed tools can provide important functions for an elderly person, such as user-friendly automatic light sensors and grab bars in bathrooms. Sensors on a bed to turn on a light switch can also be helpful, Tangelos said.

“We recommended smart technology to a lot of patients as well as technologically advanced nursing homes,” he said.

Telemedicine, videoconferencing between patients and their doctors, helps patients get vital medical advice and information without having to travel or to arrange a ride, said Cathy Nall of the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Electronic Health Center in Galveston. Patients can also visit with an emergency room doctor before making a potentially unnecessary trip to the emergency room, Nall said.

“It much easier than getting someone who is very fragile in and out of a car,” Nall said. “It is much less stressful.”

Passive technology, such as video and Web cameras, can help curb nursing home abuse and also help keep a watchful eye on elderly people in their homes. Cameras also make the job of proving abuse or neglect a lot easier for law enforcement.

“If it’s on tape, it like catching somebody robbing a store on a surveillance videotape,” Bedford police Lt. Kirk Roberts said. “Though some would argue that you can always edit them, those provide great evidence. It’s just like having an eyewitness that can be replayed over and over again to a jury.”

TUCSON - Two assisted living homes here have been placed on probation after state investigators found they neglected elderly residents, records show.

Carestone at River Centre staff failed to react to a resident’s seriously deteriorating medical condition from Nov. 24 to Dec. 6, and did not notify the woman’s nurse practitioner until Dec. 7, the state health department found.

The woman - who is not named in the state’s report because of confidentiality rules - was sent by ambulance to El Dorado Hospital on Dec. 8. She was found to be dehydrated, with a severe urinary tract infection and other problems.

Many AL facilities don’t have nurses in house, 25 hours a day. So this can be the result.

She subsequently died, but the health department could not say that her death was caused by lack of care at Carestone, said Lisa Wynn, deputy assistant director of the state health department.

Carestone officials in Tucson and at the company’s headquarters near Houston said Friday that they would not comment.

Casa Linda Home Care also was placed on probation after a Feb. 24 investigation documented numerous instances of neglect.

State surveyors found no certified caregivers on site at the time of the investigation. One resident was found to have a large, infected bedsore on her left heel, and a physician’s orders to refer the same resident to hospice had been ignored.

Three residents’ rooms were found to have “very strong odors of urine and feces,” and at least two residents were found lying in their feces.

There was no evidence that a diabetic resident was getting blood-sugar checks, and other residents were not getting prescribed medications. The home was generally filthy and unsanitary, according to the health department’s report.

A follow-up investigation on May 3 “showed tremendous improvement,” said Alan Oppenheim, manager of the health department’s office of assisted-living licensure.

Caregivers in ALF don’t have to be certified by law. That’s only for actual nursing homes. Many folks don’t know the difference between a nursing home, a retirement home, assisted living.

This is something I have heard about recently. Where I work, the patients are sent out for the initial DX but promptly brought back to us. They get their treatments in my facility. Mind you this is in Canada- the story here. But we’re seeing here in the US too.

Hamilton, ON — There may be no advantage to taking nursing home residents to hospital for treatment of pneumonia. They can do as well if they receive the same medical treatment at their residence, a study conducted by McMaster University researchers and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has shown.

When nursing home residents are routinely hospitalized with pneumonia, they may become susceptible to other health risks, including a reduction in their quality of life and a decline in functional health. The transfers also place a major burden on the healthcare system in emergency departments and hospital wards, particularly during influenza season.

In contrast, treatment at home can significantly save health care costs, estimated to be $1,200 per patient treated for pneumonia.

“The data have important implications for the delivery of health care services for both long-term care facilities and acute care hospitals,” says Mark Loeb, principal investigator and professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert. “We estimate that implementation of the clinical pathway could result in a savings of $84 million Canadian annually. In the U.S., the cost savings could approximate $831 million annually.”

Dr. Mark Loeb and his colleagues at McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine conducted a randomized controlled trial of 680 residents in 22 nursing homes in the Hamilton area. They assessed hospital admissions, length of hospital stay, mortality, quality of life, functional status and cost.

They found that by following a defined standard of care to treat pneumonia, essentially bringing hospital care to the nursing home, hospitalizations were reduced by over half -� 10 percent of residents versus 22 percent in the group who had usual care. There was a substantial cost savings of more than $1,200 per resident, with no increase in mortality.

The defined clinical pathway included the use of oral antibiotics, portable chest x-rays, oxygen saturation monitoring, rehydration and close monitoring by a research nurse.

“The results of Dr. Loeb’s study point to ways seniors can receive the best available health care with the least possible disruption at a stage in their lives when any disruption can be a significant source of stress,” said Dr. Morris Barer, scientific director of the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research. “This study is a compelling example of how evidence gained through health research can save money and strengthen our health care system.”