Provide an example of a difficulty you have in carrying out duty of care in agecare or nursing homes?

Well my mom is the director of nursing of a 320+ bed longterm care facitlity...the hardest thing for her are state, city, and federal surveys or inspections. The government is seriously on a witchhunt in all nursing regardless of how good or bad they are because people do not like the idea of nursing homes, no matter how much the staff slave away to make them both excellent in care and quality of life. I know that my mom gives way more than anyone could expect toward her and the elders. Her place has won countless awards in state and nationally, but the surveyers continue to plague the facility with impractical regulations and defficiencies generally based on heresay and false speculations.

You are a nurses aide. You have been assigned seventeen male patients. You have to get the ambulatory and wheel chair patients to dinner on time, washed and well dressed.

You have to have those seventeen beds linen constantly clean and dry.

You have to drain the catheter bags and dump the bed pans, and clean the bed pans, replacing one in a timely manner in case the patient has to go again.

You have to answer the call light and beeper.

While you are doing this, you must keep calm, don't get stressed out, don't worry about your substandard pay, don't worry about the fact that you have to search the whole home for a helper to get that obese patient moved or turned. Where's the Hoyle lift? Oh, the other aides are hiding out in the break room. Don't get angry!

Above all, stay compassionate. Think that some day YOU may be the one depending on someone to assist you in YOUR elder age.

Golden years? Hmmm....

Where do I stop? You say when.

I have one example. I was 6 months pregnant working in a group home for the mentally disabled. I had worked three 10 hour shifts in a 48 day period. Third shift didn't show. I was exhausted and calling everybody I could to relive me, (try calling your bosses at 1am, not fun). I finally passed out on a pile of books with the phone in one hand and coffee in another; and one of the patients ran away. I felt horrible but of course the blame was put on me and I was fired.

Shortage of staff is the biggest problem. Quality of staff is probably the second biggest problem when dealing with direct care, as it is the lowest paying position.

The hardest part about it was how sad the people in the nursing home were. sometimes no family would visit them and one lady acctually said she was sorry i had to see her like this! I almost cried!