“It’s A Wonderful Life” is the Christmas feel-good film. In case you’ve not seen it I won’t spoil the plot (although as you might expect it can be found on YouTube) but it’s really about how we don’t always see the good in ourselves. In ruminating a little wider on that thought, I came back to the universal truth of how we also need to see the good in others, that ordinary people do extraordinary things and how, as people live longer, the scope for them to have done more extraordinary things just gets bigger and bigger.
For one reason and another, this Christmas and New Year I have had rather more need for contact with the caring and medical professions than I would have liked. All of it relating to people who are, by any definition, now old. Nothing could have dispelled the warm “Wonderful Life” feeling more quickly, as I became incensed at how, in our society, old people are ignored because of what they have become, rather than venerated for what they have done.
I’ve visited residential care homes, where Christmas preparations were in full swing - but only for the staff. While they bedecked the staff room with lively banter and livelier music, the residents sat in an adjacent room in glum silence watching a muted TV. And the staff knew I was coming; and they knew I was looking for a place for respite care for my Dad. Then there was the home where a resident was banging on a locked door for the entire 10 minutes it took the deputy manager to explain that they couldn’t provide any respite places at that time – as if their patent lack of care for the resident wouldn’t already have put me off.
And don’t get me started about the hospital – where boorish consultants don’t listen, where nurses would rather clean up a messy bed than help a patient to the bathroom, and where silo-working is as endemic as visiting times are antiquated. The hospital systems that do work? Well, that will be the car parking, with its usurious pricing and fearsome ticketing and the exorbitant TV and phone system. Both systems where money matters more than care and dignity.
People say that the problem is how to fund this difficult area of social policy and that’s true. But it's not everything – in the end care is delivered by people and it's their attitude that determines the care someone actually receives. Working within that system, I didn’t meet a single person who wasn’t pleasant, attentive or even charming to me. But I could walk to where they were to get their attention, I didn’t have moments of forgetfulness, and I didn’t have machines strapped to me. Their attitude to those less able, was quite, quite different.
But I am not entirely without hope. I met some truly exceptional people – the nurse who kissed my Dad’s forehead when she left for Christmas, the manager of the (charitable, not private) care home where we found him respite who had a kind word for everyone. These people are fabulous examples of how care should be delivered and how it is possible to retain the right attitude in the most unpromising of environments.
Last year, our Board away day spent time exploring how we might extend the range of services we provide to older people beyond support and into care. One of our Board asked what the justification for us seeking to do that was and at the time, I didn’t have a ready answer. After the experience of the last month, I now do – if we do it, we’ll have the right attitude.
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| Do we face a bleak future for care? |
I’ve visited residential care homes, where Christmas preparations were in full swing - but only for the staff. While they bedecked the staff room with lively banter and livelier music, the residents sat in an adjacent room in glum silence watching a muted TV. And the staff knew I was coming; and they knew I was looking for a place for respite care for my Dad. Then there was the home where a resident was banging on a locked door for the entire 10 minutes it took the deputy manager to explain that they couldn’t provide any respite places at that time – as if their patent lack of care for the resident wouldn’t already have put me off.
And don’t get me started about the hospital – where boorish consultants don’t listen, where nurses would rather clean up a messy bed than help a patient to the bathroom, and where silo-working is as endemic as visiting times are antiquated. The hospital systems that do work? Well, that will be the car parking, with its usurious pricing and fearsome ticketing and the exorbitant TV and phone system. Both systems where money matters more than care and dignity.
People say that the problem is how to fund this difficult area of social policy and that’s true. But it's not everything – in the end care is delivered by people and it's their attitude that determines the care someone actually receives. Working within that system, I didn’t meet a single person who wasn’t pleasant, attentive or even charming to me. But I could walk to where they were to get their attention, I didn’t have moments of forgetfulness, and I didn’t have machines strapped to me. Their attitude to those less able, was quite, quite different.
But I am not entirely without hope. I met some truly exceptional people – the nurse who kissed my Dad’s forehead when she left for Christmas, the manager of the (charitable, not private) care home where we found him respite who had a kind word for everyone. These people are fabulous examples of how care should be delivered and how it is possible to retain the right attitude in the most unpromising of environments.
Last year, our Board away day spent time exploring how we might extend the range of services we provide to older people beyond support and into care. One of our Board asked what the justification for us seeking to do that was and at the time, I didn’t have a ready answer. After the experience of the last month, I now do – if we do it, we’ll have the right attitude.
This seems to mirror exactly my experience with my dad. I live in Northern Virginia -- among the wealthiest counties in the country -- so you'd think there would be large number of public homes available for the elderly, but no.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of help to the bathroom was among the most depressing findings for me. I think they are afraid to leave a patient alone on the toilet because of the liability, but they don't want to hire enough people for all the patients needing help to the toilet. So they let everyone poop in bed and clean up one at a time. Only one diaper change a day because the homes are chronically understaffed.
The aide serving the food is the same one who changes the diapers, so if a patient has a filthy diaper at meal time, he or she is stuck with it. Doesn't really help their appetite.
After 3 months in the nursing home, my dad had given up eating and had lost considerable weight. I took him out and cared for him from there.
This is tough to go on further. I don't know what the solution is.