Posted on 05/25/2011 9:44:57 PM PDT by Nachum
Doctors are prescribing drinking water for neglected elderly patients to stop them dying of thirst in hospital. The measure – to remind nurses of the most basic necessity – is revealed in a damning report on pensioner care in NHS wards. Some trusts are neglecting the elderly on such a fundamental level their wards could face closure orders. The snapshot study, triggered by a Mail campaign, found staff routinely ignored patients’ calls for help and forgot to check that they had had enough to eat and drink.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
...”how about requiring families to take in their elderly and care for them themselves, instead of expecting the govt to provide?.......not there’s an idea”....
Those who love their elderly will do that..Unfortunately, the relatives want to drain their elderly of any money they might have, but they do not want to do anything for it.
No matter how poorly I was treated by my boss, I would NOT take it out on a customer. If I were a nurse, and I treated a patient poorly, I would deserve to be tossed out a window, too.
I can always look for another place to work, meanwhile...
Thank you, Nurse, for posting. We need to get back to family care for our elderly. However, the problem today is that the “Sandwich Generation” is already having to rear the Grandkids because the Mom’s are single, divorced, or just stressed because both parents work and it is killing some who are already elderly themselves. How would they take care of Grandma and the Grandkids, too?
They’re sending a mixed message to the staff. They actually want these folks to LIVE??
Good luck with that..there is a shortage of nurses for a reason. The good care givers are working alongside people who the facilities drag off the street to make their numbers. There are people working in these facilities that are unable to be hired anywhere else.
In socialized health care the practitioners are in direct competition with their patients for funding. Less money spent on patients means more available for workers.
The fact doctors have to prescribe water to keep patients alive indicates the nurses are killing patients by depriving them of water.
The emphasis of this article is that people simply aren’t drinking enough water during hot summer months.
About eight years ago in Europe....we had one of those rare 95-degree periods that lasted about six weeks. It was a funny thing. Off in France....hundreds of senior citizens died, and the chief reason in the end was lack of water. These folks were consuming a fraction of the water that they should have been drinking, and consuming wine instead. In Germany? There were only around a dozen senior citizens to die from the heat....mostly because older Germans were drinking mostly water or water with juice.
The science and medical community came out after the event....to proclaim that people had forgotten ages old knowledge of drinking water to replenish yourself.
I flew UA twice and lost my baggage both times. They know where it is. A clerk told me so and said he had handled one bag. The Company told me that they would not send my bags to me or compensate me for them. In talking to others who have flown economy class on UA I have come to believe that a certain percentage of Economy Cass luggage is never loaded in a fuel saving measure. The staff on UA planes treat the passengers as merely an unreasonable requirement for them to do some desultory work on their vacation time. They don’t even seem to understand that it is the passengers that make it possible for them to wear the nifty uniforms and travel to exotic places which is what they think their whole employment is about. They resent the passengers and treat them with high disdain. I have also flown KAL and Cathay who treat passengers as if they would really like them to fly on their airplanes again. I never had any trouble with baggage or anything else on them at all.
The lone nurse had meds to pass out for 42 patients, charting and all that you mentioned in your post. Most had to stay overtime to get their paperwork finished.
It's a 90 mile an hour job.
“The NHS have cut back on RN’s - I believe they’re talking about nursing aides who practically run the units or wards.”
You are absolutely correct. There is a huge difference between a Registered Nurse and a Nurse’s Aid. Most people perceive anyone in scrubs as a “nurse” but this is so incorrect. Only RN’s can dispense medicines, perform specific procedures etc. The “nurse” who takes your blood pressure and temperature and brings you water or ice chips is 99% of the time a Nurse’s Aid. Here in the US we experience mostly well trained good Certified Nurse’s Aids; but once Obamacare’s “reduction in payments to providers (i.e. hospitals)” kicks in who knows what will happen. Nothing good I’m sure.
We have had two of our elders die in our home. A third, unfortunately, could not leave the hospital. Before we married, we talked about this and ordered our lives to make it possible.
It was not easy and required some sacrifice. It was not easy, but we did not have to do it alone, as home health care and Hospice provided wonderful support.
I know we were blessed to even be able to do this and I am sorry for people who might hope to do it as well, but find themselves unable to do so. That would be horrible.
I wonder if this "Brave New World" we are creating has any provision for end of life support mechanisms - and I am not talking about the needle. It goes back to the principle that the preferred solution should be the one that directly involves the small unit (the family) rather than trying to solve the problem with big programs and governmental control.
Fascinating.
I say it is not possible.
I have to agree, and I am over 65. My mother had a cancer with a near zero survival rate. She refused Chemo and surgery. What would have been the point to gain six months?
Further, every older relative I know who went to a "Home" lived exactly long enough for their insurance and property to be plundered and liquidated, and then at that instant, there was nothing further Medical Science could do.
50/50 chance of recovery? Go for it. 2% chance? Of course not-don't be silly.
“This is sad. I have an elderly relative possibly at the end of her life, in the hospital in queens right now. I hope they are giving her enough fluids,”
But the fact that you don’t know or care enough to know about this elderly relative is the real problem, whether in the socialized UK system, or the mostly socialized US system.
If you are willing to leave a relative to the care of people you do not know and have no reason to trust - and more importantly that are not paid by you - then who is really to blame?
If your relative dies of dehydration, will you even care, or will you simply complain of “awful nurses”?
Hospitals are a bureaucracy - they are also a bottom-line business in the end - that is poorly funded by the large part of patients that are on some government socialized medical insurance program.
Bureaucracies can do awful, horrible things that would land individuals in jail.
Individuals who simply don’t care can also, through inaction, do horrible things by counting on bureaucracy to do the things that they should do themselves.
So who is better? You, or a nurse who is given an impossible workload and cannot possibly take care of a patient in a way everyone cares to want (but nobody wishes to pay to accomplish)?
Good luck to your elderly relative - with nurses who may not be able to take care of them properly, and relatives who won’t take care of them properly, it’s a wonder they aren’t dead already.
What happened to England?
This happens all the time with nursing homes and dementia patients. The dementia patients don’t think to drink enough water or refuse it, and if the staff is not paying attention, next thing you know they’re in the ER with “altered mental status.” Well, yeah! Sorry about your friend.
Is it even possible?
I say it is not possible.
The answer is, we don't.
The correct answer is to stop propagandizing people into believing that only government can provide, and that government provides everything.
One of the worst things that has been done to people is to convince them that they don't have to provide for their future, because government will take care of their every need once they reach a certain age. Once they reach that age, of course, government turns out to be not as generous as promised--but if they haven't put away a nice little nest egg, they're stuck with trying to survive on the pittance that Social Security gives them, and the substandard medical care that Medicare pays for. (Not that the doctors who provide the care are substandard; just that the care is rationed.)
Once retirees are hostages to the system, of course, they're highly susceptible to the Democrats who are great at convincing people that, if not for them, instead of having little, they would have nothing. Any attempt at trying to shift more responsibility to people is met with screeching from the left, and commercials like the one I heard about recently, showing some conservative shoving Grandma off a cliff.
Is it even possible?
I say it is not possible.
The answer is, we don't.
The correct answer is to stop propagandizing people into believing that only government can provide, and that government provides everything.
One of the worst things that has been done to people is to convince them that they don't have to provide for their future, because government will take care of their every need once they reach a certain age. Once they reach that age, of course, government turns out to be not as generous as promised--but if they haven't put away a nice little nest egg, they're stuck with trying to survive on the pittance that Social Security gives them, and the substandard medical care that Medicare pays for. (Not that the doctors who provide the care are substandard; just that the care is rationed.)
Once retirees are hostages to the system, of course, they're highly susceptible to the Democrats who are great at convincing people that, if not for them, instead of having little, they would have nothing. Any attempt at trying to shift more responsibility to people is met with screeching from the left, and commercials like the one I heard about recently, showing some conservative shoving Grandma off a cliff.
But meanwhile, I just want to make two comments in the context of this article:
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