Excellent hygiene in nursing homes is a must. Residents that live there can easily get sick due to their medical condition, or they have a poor immune system. With all different types of bacteria and germs spread throughout a day, residents can be affected in a negative way. So with personal experience and some research, I am able to present to you the importance of hygiene of the residents' in nursing home care. If hygiene is subsided, there is a high possibility that a patient will get sick. Geriatrics already have a weak immune system. So something as little as cough bacteria can get them extremely sick and could eventually lead to death. From experience, working in a nursing home isn't always easy. Since working in a nursing home, we are often short staffed. This can lead to serious issues when it comes to getting every detail of our job done correctly. Many of the times we aren’t able to spend the time with each resident like we should to make sure that their hygiene is properly …show more content…
If all departments of the facility do not work together in keeping every part of the facility clean, that can also lead to geriatrics getting sick. This could be from bathrooms, kitchens, bathroom floors, and the residents rooms not being properly sanitized. This can lead to germs and bacteria growth, which can then turn into diseases and infections that the residents can get. The kitchen is a place that most people wouldn’t think would need to be focused on for cleanliness relating to germs being spread. The staff in the kitchen need to be wearing the proper clothing and wear hair nets and gloves at all times. Also, kitchen staff needs to wash their hands as much as the health care givers and keep the kitchen as sanitized and clean as the rest of the facility. Because just like the bathrooms, dinning rooms, bedrooms, and shower rooms; the kitchen is also a breeding ground for
Forsell M, Sjogren P, Kullberg E, Johansson O, Wedel P, Herbst B, et al. Attitudes and perceptions towards oral hygiene tasks among geriatric nursing home staff. Int J Dent Hyg. 2011;9(3):199-203.
Elderly Culture and Nursing Homes Nursing homes offer a wide range of long-term care assistance for older adults to be able to meet their everyday needs. Older adults from different cultural backgrounds experience conflict with their decision to participate in a nursing home, catalyzing the underlying stigma different cultures hold towards nursing homes. In many cultures, older adults look for family as their primary source of care. However, when their needs cannot be met due to disability and mental health issues, it begins to take a toll on the person’s instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). IADLs are complex daily actions that are needed to live (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2015).
It is important to preserve the dignity of all patients in the care of nurses and to not make them feel as though they are worthless. For example, when someone is incontinent and cannot care for themselves anymore, such as some residents in long-term care, it is important to help them remain dignified. The resident should be able to feel as though they are respected and are given the appropriate amount of privacy as we are working in their home. With this being said, it is very crucial for nurses to provide residents’ in long-term care, as well as patients in the hospital, with great care while still preserving their dignity and maintaining their privacy. It is important for the client to feel as comfortable as they would if they were in their own home. With this, Registered nurses must appreciate and respect each person in whom they care for. This respect is seen through the nurse as they explain to the patient what they will be doing as they are caring for them, as well as providing care within the wishes of the person. Patients in the hands of the Registered Nurse, appreciate caring as a core value during their stay in the hospital. This is proved as Davis (2005) states, “From a patient perspective, the caring presence that emanates from nurses, positively impacts patients’ hospital experience,” (p.127) As nurses, caring is the absolute root of nursing practice. Preserving patients’ privacy and dignity involves aspects such as closing doors or screens and making sure they are covered while doing so, (Royal College of Nursing, 2015). The Code of Ethics outlines the importance of Registered Nurses supporting the person, family, group, population or community receiving care in maintaining their dignity and integrity, (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). All these factors involved with the Code of Ethics greatly impact the nursing practice of
Because of insufficient and poorly trained staff commonly found in nursing homes. Care givers are often overworked and grossly underpaid, which often results in rude and abusive behavior towards vulnerable residents who beg them for simple needs such as water or to be taken to the bathroom. Federal and State laws require that nursing homes develop a plan of care and employ sufficient staffing to provide all the care listed in the care plan. Most corporate-owned nursing homes today are not sufficiently staffed, and they can not provide all the care listed on the care plan. Consequently, residents are not taken to the toilet when necessary; they’re often left lying in urine and feces.
These facilities are regulated by the state and federal government and these regulations protects the senior residents. For example it is mandatory for the facilities in Texas to provide mandatory services such as daily living activities like dressing, feeding or help prepare meals and cleaning. Depending on the facility license the staff would have to assist with financial management and certain medical services. Even though the federal government developed guidelines the state can make their own as long as it complies with the federal government. Some organizations may accept private pay while others accepted Medicaid. Regulations are developed to protect residence that from being in an unsafe environment. As a result some assisted living and nursing homes are unable to continue services by having fines or closing for an unknown amount of time. Since each state has different set of regulations I will focus on the state regulations in Texas because it is the state I reside in. The organization in Texas that regulates assisted living and nursing homes is the Department of Aging and Disability services(DADS).
According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, there were more than 16,000 nursing homes across the U.S. as of 2010. Such facilities age some of the most vulnerable members of our society, the elderly and disabled. All too often, nursing home residents in West Virginia, and throughout the country, are mistreated by those who they, and their families, have entrusted with their care. However, there are things that people can do to help protect their loved ones from nursing home abuse and neglect.
Influenza can be introduced and spread into an extended-care facility by newly admitted residents, health care staff and by visitors. Residents of long-term care facilities may experience severe and fatal illness during influenza outbreaks. Preventing transmission of influenza viruses and different infectious agents inside health care settings, needs a comprehensive approach that includes: vaccination, testing, infection management, and antiviral treatment (Unknown, 2013).
According to JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) bed sores, also known as pressure ulcers, happen to those who have continued exposer to moisture, like urine or feces and are confined to a bed or wheelchair (Gill, 2003). What happens most of the time is that a nurse has so many patients to take care of that they just do not have the time or they do not care about individual patients. When elderly people complains or gripe about his or her position or the situation they may not have a voice in the matter because the facility is following doctors’ orders. For the most part, patients spend most of the day in their room by themselves, often only checked on during rounds. The elderly are often left to succumb to boredom and depression due to the fact of no companionship. The people who were once active in their community now have to be confined to a small room, and unfamiliar surrounding which can have devastating
It’s hard to work with elders who often have over 15 issues and you need to figure out how to make them comfortable and not fix everything. Things like checking the feet and making sure they are cared for, or looking for sores, your job is to help them maintain whatever sort of life they are living and keep them going for the years or months they have left. It’s not a glamorous profession and though most doctors look for ways to do surgery, geriatrics often look for any method but that, due to the
The systematic review; Interventions to improve hand hygiene compliance in patient care, conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration investigated inventions to improve hand hygiene compliance within patient care. The review included 2 original studies with an additional two new studies (Gould & Moralejo et al., 2010). Throughout the review it was affirmed that among hand hygiene is an indispensable method in the prevention of hospital-acquired infections (HAI), the compliance among nurses’ is inadequate. Nurses are identified within the public as dependable and trustworthy in a time of vulnerability due to their specialised education and skills (Hughes, 2008). Thus, it is imperative that evidence based practice is cond...
Using good hand hygiene is a start to making sure the patient environment is safe. “Handwashing is a fundamental principle and practice in the prevention, control, and reduction of healthcare-acquired infections” (Bjerke, 2004, p. 1). Hand hygiene aids in infection control, being as most hospital acquired infections are due to improper or absence of hand hygiene. Fox, Wavra, Drake, Mulligan, Jones, Bennett, and Bader (2015) suggest that 2.5 million deaths occur from hospital-acquired infections and of those deaths, 90,000 were preventable if the workers in healthcare would have used proper hand hygiene. Piece of mind is a mutual benefit of using hand hygiene in the healthcare setting. A nurse benefits from using hand hygiene because it would reduce the risk of that nurse contaminating other patients when going from patient room to patient room. A patient benefits from using hand hygiene because it reduces the risk of that patient spreading infection from one part of the body to another. Piece of mind is the benefit for knowing that patients and nurses are protected in healthcare facilities by using hand hygiene. Patients and nurses will benefit from using hand hygiene because it is a simple way to aid in keeping the individual healthy. The hands carry many germs and constant adherence to good hand hygiene will decrease the risk of people catching illnesses and contaminating shared surfaces (door handles, tables, and
A theory I can relate to is Nightingales theory, I found her theory to be extremely interesting. A patient health is affected by the environment that they are in, whether it is at the hospital or at their house. Once a patient is discharged the nurse should be aware of the patient home environment, what they have access to, and what they don’t have.
Patient’s personal hygiene is a vital part of the nurse’s role. Young (1991) described cleanliness as a basic human right, not a luxury the need for the patient to physically cleansing and which would include skin, hair and nails.
In addition, healthcare workers’ handwashing technique differs from the one you use at home. It is “important that all surfaces of the hands are cleaned thoroughly to dislodge and wash away pathogens” (Burton & Ludwig, 2015, pg. 261). The spread of pathogens in a healthcare setting happens with high likelihood. Therefore, it is imperative to wash one’s hands in the following situations. First, upon entering the patient’s room, secondly, anytime your hands are visibly dirty, third, between caring for two patients in the same room, forth, immediately after removing your gloves, and finally after touching body fluids, secretions, excretions, or contaminated
Elderly patients require special needs when they come into the hospital, weather they are ill, have fallen, end of life care, or are going to undergo surgery. As a nurse the most important and beneficial thing you can do is a full head to toe assessment, and ask the patient if they have an advance directive. If the elder has an advance directive, it will help you as the nurse as well as the multidisciplinary team provide the best care for the client if something was to happen if they were unable to make the decisions on what they want. An assessment is an important part of the nursing practice because as a nurse who is with the patient most at the bed side it is important to have a base line of your patient. A base line is important so you can provide the best care for your patient and be able to determine if they are improving or declining. This is important because as a nurse taking care of an elderly you will most likely be working with a multidisciplinary care team, along with residents and families of the elder you are taking care of. According to the Hartford Geriatric Nursing Institute developed the Nurses Improving Care for Health Systems Elders (NICHE) program, “the nurse plays a pivotal role in influencing the older adult’s hospital experience and outcomes, through direct nursing care, as well as coordination of interdisciplinary