A friend sent me the article about the elderly nursing home patient in Australia who was mauled by mice. This was my response to that article.
I was a geriatric nurse for about 10 years. The reason I quit and the reason I would never go back is that nursing homes are a dumping ground for people who’s families don’t want to take responsibility for their elders. They are warehoused there to die and they know it. The facilities consider the patients money making commodities and they are stripped of their humanity. They are no longer persons who have value but a product to make money with.
How low our society has fallen in shucking it’s duty to our elders.
I swore to myself many years ago that my parents will NEVER be warehoused. The article you sent is one of the reasons. I spent several years as a contract nurse and worked in MANY facilities. One of my most horrific memories was of facilities infested with cockroaches. It happened more than once. Debilitated persons are unable to defend themselves. In one facility I was the charge nurse several times on the graveyard shift. I had sixty patients and one CAN (nurses assistant). I had to do laundry before we could even do a bed check. That meant that incontinent patients were forced to lie in their own excrement until I could do enough laundry to clean them up.
Aside from having to do laundry there were meds, checking on the more severely ill patients, tube feedings for those no longer able to eat, treatments for wounds, records, and toileting patients, taking vitals (temperatures, blood pressures, etc.). It was a nightmare.
The nursing shortage is due to the interference of government regulations by people who have never had to work up close and personal with the sick, elderly and dying.
Can you tell this is my personal soapbox?
It is a weak, corrupt and dying society that treats it’s most vulnerable, the unborn citizens and the elderly citizens with such utter contempt.
