Posted on 10/18/2008 3:58:31 PM PDT by B-Chan
I knew my mother Norma's 81st birthday would be poignant. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer six months earlier... and was not expected to survive the year.
But at least, I reasoned, she was being treated at the world-renowned Royal Marsden Hospital in West London. There she would not only receive the best possible treatment but be cared for by dedicated nurses accustomed to looking after the terminally ill...
But when I arrived on Horder Ward on the morning of my mother's birthday, she was distressed and disorientated. Instead of wearing the white linen pyjamas she had gone to bed in, she was wrapped in an NHS gown Gradually it emerged that she had woken up in the middle of the night in a pool of blood, terrified she was haemorrhaging. She had rung the bell next to her bed but there was no response.
Eventually a nurse turned up to discover my mother's cannula - a tube inserted into her vein and attached to a saline drip - had fallen out of her arm.
The nurse bustled around changing the sheets while my mother sat covered in blood, shivering beside the bed. When she asked for a blanket, the nurse told her to put on her flimsy cotton dressing gown, an offer she declined as she didn't want it covered in blood.
Finally she was dressed in a hospital gown, put back into bed and left alone until I arrived in the morning. 'Where are her pyjamas?' I asked the nurse. 'I don't know,' she shrugged.
[ ... ]
We're all familiar with the problems facing the NHS: the chronic shortage of nurses, the drain on funding, target-orientated managers, government edicts...
But there's one question that cannot so easily be dismissed: when did hospital nurses stop caring?
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The hospital this English lady went to was no resort— but at least she wasn't raped and beaten there. Our system works no better than theirs.
Old people are human beings. The fact that they are difficult to care for makes it hard to find quality people willing to make a career out of caring for them. Those with money can hire well-paid private nurses; those without go into government-subsidized facilities, which hire people who are willing to do hard work for extremely low wages — in other words, ex-cons, illegals, and no-accounts. These people do the minimum work necessary to avoid being fired — and the people depending upon them be damned.
The government of a nation has no business running a hospital. Anything run by the government is going to end up as a shabby, money-guzzling mediocroty. But our private system of elder care in America is a failure as well; those with money do great, and everybody else shifts for themselves. (And some die at home alone, unable to afford care of any kind.) However, it doesn't have to be an either/or question. There are several methods by which everyone could be assured of quality care without turning the medical profession into the Postal Service. For example, the federal government could allow those who are legal guardians of their elder parents to deduct from their taxes 100% of the cost of caring for them at home, including the cost of bedding, medical supplies, and skilled care. This would encourage more young families to take in their folks when they become too old to live unassisted. For those choosing institutional care for their parents, the Medicare system could issue "eldercare vouchers" (in the form of a swipe card), valid for expenses at any state-licensed elder care facility. By doing this, we can guarantee that all elderly people have the money to obtain quality care from privately-owned facilities that can afford to hire quality caregivers, but without having the federal government run the elder care facilities directly.
That’s horrible my FRiend, I’ll say a prayer for your Grandmother tonight.
Examples of the fruits of socialism.
“We’re all familiar with the problems facing the NHS: the chronic shortage of nurses ... “
No this is not about a SHORTAGE of nurses.
It is about nurses that don’t give a crap.
Why wasn't your grandmother in your home?
L
My mother has one aunt left out of at least 24 aunts, uncles and parents. This aunt is now a ward of the state having given all her money to her nieces and nephews. My mom and her cousins take turns going to see the aunt almost every day. Part of it is to be sure that our aunt knows we still care, but the other part is to be sure that she's not being neglected. The people they hire don't care. They just don't. And they are flippant.
There is no excuse at all for abuse and neglect among the elderly. None. There's two horrid stories here. Don't let this happen in your family.
The very moment they ceased to be held accountable to their customers. That's when.
L
> when did hospital nurses stop caring?
When they formed their own union. What did you expect: Florence Nightingale? When you have a system on the brink of bankruptcy, flooded by people who demand free healthcare at the ridiculous idea of getting first class healthcare should have their heads examined.
They dont care. Even here in LAC hospitals, I truly witnessed with my own eyes that they are simply overburdened by illegals and when most of the people don’t pay for that they get and ask the govt for help (which never comes), you think there will happy, smiling faces on the employees? Of course not. I came from vancouver, Canada so if you need more horror stories about socialized healthcare, I’ll narrate them before Halloween..
Thank you. She was a good woman, who raised twelve good children through two world wars, a depression, and the ‘60s. She was 92 years old when she died, and over the sixteen years since I’ve come to miss her more, not less.
As for her abuse: our family hired an attorney who hired a PI, who tracked down the guy who did it. He was an escaped convict — a murderer, in fact — whom the home had hired without checking his background as required by law (in Texas, the Health & Safety Code Ann. §250.001-.009 forbids nursing homes, custodial care facilities, assisted living facilities, home health agencies, adult day care providers and other specifically listed entities from hiring persons convicted of certain serious criminal offenses). The family then sued the big corporation (I’d better not say which one) that owned the facility, and managed to get a substantial recovery for her damages — but she was too dead to enjoy it by the time the system finished grinding.
Mrs. Chan and I decided long ago that NONE of our parents are going into a home when they get too old to live on their own. We’ll eat potatoes every night and work two jobs each if we have to, but I’m not putting any of our folks in jail for the “crime” of growing old.
I like you ideas.
Though, no system is going to be perfect, and there are always going to be horror stories - even in the one you suggest. It’s easy enough to envision a situation where the children take in their parent(s) to get the benefits and still end up abusing them. It’s a matter of choosing the best of the worst.
There are a few compassionate ones left, everyone else is just in it for the money. Everyone in health care has noticed.
The BIG difference in the USofA...is that you had the opportunity to take your grandmother OUT of such a horrible situation, imagine if that was the only institution you were allowed to take her?
You need to not get so huffy yourself.
When my grandmother became unable to care for herself, her eldest daughter (my aunt) borrowed against the mortgage and had a complete apartment built for Grandma in the garage of her house. Unfortunately, as time went by the physical labor required to keep Grandma clean and clothed was too strenuous for my aunt (herself an elderly woman) to perform, and there was no money to hire round-the-clock in-home nurses. That’s when they put her in the home.
I was living in California at the time, and Grandma was too sick to move that far away.
I’m very sorry to hear that your grandmother suffered that way. How horrible it must have been for her. It sickens me.
Nursing is like anything else, you take your values into the job with you. If you don’t have those values to begin with, you aren’t likely to get them on the job. We have fallen so very far, so very fast, and our society is paying a high price across the board.
In the UK it’s sociast medicine.
Here, so far, it’s regulations and government involvement in Medicare and other programs.
The nurses spend so much time documenting details they have little time to deliver real patient care.
It is incredibly stressful. It’s easier to start a small business, at least until Osama takes over, God forbid.
We have gone through a cultural shift and the prevailing hegemony does not value life and is not of the Judeo-Christian ethos that existed 100 years ago.
So true and so sad. Part of my job is to track quality of care issues in the hospital where I work. Sad to say I would not want to be a patient in my hospital. Doctors complain, patients complain, families complain but nothing improves. I don't know how so many people in a nurturing profession can be so cold and heartless. That said, there are some outstanding people in the field but they are no longer the majority.
Thanks for the kind words. Sadly, suffering was nothing new to my Grandma. She was a sharecropper’s wife.
Not all of those who work in the elder care industry are indifferent or evil. There are plenty of good people out there, working hard to take good care of the sick, the old, and the dying. Most are poorly paid for the vital work that they do. We call such people heroes. These are people who follow the command of the Master: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...” [Matt 6:20].
You are absolutely, 100% correct, my FRiend.
May God help us.
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