Changing the Reputation of Nursing Homes

Taking care of the individuals that are getting older takes many different needs. Most of these needs cannot be given from the help of a family. This causes the need of having to put your love one into a home and causing for the worry of how they will be treated. It is important for the family and also the soon to be client to feel at home in their new environment. This has been an issue with the care being provided for each individual, which has lead to the need of making sure individuals have their own health care plan.

Residential care facilities (RCF) have been an important component of housing and long-term care for older adults since the 1990s. They emerged as an alternative to nursing homes for people who do not require 24 hour nursing care, but are unable to live fully independently. These facilities may provide assistance with medication, personal care, and activities of daily living (ADLs). Assisted-living within RCFs has emerged as an important long-term care option, with over >30,000 RCFs and a total capacity of 971,900 beds by 20105. However, this sector of care receives little assistance form government financing. Medicare does not pay for assisted-living, but Medicaid uses waivers in many states to cover some services in residential care settings, excluding room and board. As of 2007, about 115,000 Medicaid beneficiaries received services in a RCF6. Due to the fact that Medicaid will not cov...

Long term care (LTC) settings provide a vast variety of services that range from convalescent care, respite stays and skilled rehabilitation services which includes: skilled nursing, physical, occupational or speech therapy. LTC includes a broad spectrum of services that are designed to meet the varying needs of geriatric individuals and other adults with functional restrictions. The services rendered in this setting are designed to support individual needs from assistance with activities of daily living, medication management, cognitive and behavioral health support and limitations secondary to acute to chronic medical conditions. The care bestowed not only assists individuals with maintaining or improving their physical functioning, it enhances their quality of life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2013, there were 16,100 nursing homes in the United States (U.S.); over 1.7 million adult persons required placement in one of those long term care settings (CDC, 2013). Medical care within these settings has evolved from the traditional physician model with the introduction of the nurse practitioner (NP). The NP views the client as a whole, and considers how the individual’s condition or symptoms impact their overall well-being (e.g.: medically, physically and mentally). With the growing geriatric population in the United States, one has to ponder does the role of the nurse practitioner improve outcomes for the elderly clients?

Family members are always approaching my place of employment at a nursing home in search for a new home for their loved ones who they can no longer care for. When Alzheimer’s strikes families want their loved ones to be in a safe, healthy environment, and a nursing home is most commonly the first choice. Working in a nursing home for the past year I can personally say it is a wonderful alternative for the elderly than living at home. For Alzheimer’s patients who are constantly confused, wondering around, and trying to go “home” I do not feel that a nursing home is the best place that they can live. There isn’t enough staff at all times to ensure the privacy and safety of the Alzheimer’s residents plus the other 50 residents we have on the hall. Working with Alzheimer’s patients everyday they have really made a special place in...

Improving Long-Term Care Admissions Policy: A Voice of Change Thirty minutes before evening shift change and you receive the call. A new admission is in route to your facility. The patient is reported to be of high acuity, requires intravenous antibiotics, and has a diagnosis of chronic pain.

We also evaluated the proportion of residents requiring assistance in their activities of daily living (ADLs) according to the KATZ scale. Within our cohort of residents ≥65 years old, the majority of residents with CHD needed assistance with 3-4 ADLs (p=0.18) (Figure 1). However, this was found this to not be statistically significant.

Stone, R.I & Wiener, J. M. (2001). Who Will Care For Us? Addressing the Long-Term Care Workforce Crisis. The Urban Institute.

Nursing assistants work in many types of settings including nursing homes, hospice, mental health centers, assisted living residences, home care agencies, hospitals, rehabilitation and restorative care facilities (Sorrentuino & Remmert, 2012). There are many types of Long-term care centers. For this paper, I will focus on the long-term care centers often referred to as nursing homes. These LTCs are "licensed facilities that provide extended care for individuals who do not require the acute care provided in a hospital but who need more care than can be given at home" (U.S Department of Health And Human...

Nursing Home Abuse With over 1.5 million elderly and dependent adults now living in nursing homes throughout the country, abuse and neglect has become a widespread problem. Even though some nursing homes provide good care, many are subjecting helpless residents to needless suffering and death. Most residents in nursing homes are dependent on the staff for most or all their needs such as food, water, medicine, toileting, grooming- almost all their daily care. Unfortunately, many residents in nursing homes today are starved, dehydrated, over-medicated, and suffer painful pressure sores. They are often isolated, ignored and deprived of social contact and stimulation.

So often people contemplate on using nursing homes to help care for an elderly family member; due to strong concerns of the family member not receiving the quality care that nursing homes advertise. For many people they carry a belief that nursing homes just hire people off the street with minimal education, this is far from the truth. Any medical facility weather hospital, doctors office or nursing home all require an employee to have at least a bare minimum of a certification, but depending on the job position it determines the statue of educational degree required for that position. What people do not realize it is not due to lack of education that raise the concern it is the lack of passion and dedication to their careers. In the social work field, most employers require a BSW degree from a four year accredited college. Part of the process before earning a BSW degree requires students to complete a 60-hour service-learning program in a social work setting; observing and participating in social activities, collecting data needed to write a research paper of one's experience upon completion of the program. Being a student at WSCC, majoring in Social Work, the facility that provided the service-learning experience for this research paper is John M Reed Nursing Home. John M Reed Nursing Home is a nonprofit corporation, which is primarily based on Medicaid insurance and private insurance funding, the facility is located in Limestone, Tennessee. In past years, John Reed has been primarily just a Nursing Home for the aging, but as the years have passed the facility has grown, much larger now also offers Assisted Living for the elderly. They are a shared ministry of “The Church of Brethren and the Community” that their mission state...