Category: Long Term Nursing

There has been a ton of feedback over this question after a recent (and strongly worded) article written by Jean Wendland Porter was published on McKnights.

Read her article below and see whether you agree or disagree

Jean Wendland Porter writes:

“Working in long-term care for over 35 years, I’ve heard various residents referred to as “cute” nearly every day. “Cute” competes with “spry” and “adorable.” They’re called “honey” and “sweetie” as a means of communicating our concern for them.  We need to rethink how the infantilization of our elderly is received by them and their families.

Our residents are not cute.

The man who happens to be small in stature hasn’t spent his 80 years in pursuit of being cute.  He may have fought for our country overseas, and he may have seen horrors and heroism beyond our comprehension. He probably lost his parents, maybe his wife, or even his children. He may have survived our country’s deepest Depression and worked to feed his family. He may have loved ones too far away to ever see again, and carries those cares and trepidations inside, visible only to him.”

Read the full article here.

This morning, I responded to a question posed by a family member on the Q&A Forum on A Place Form Mom.com

As you know, I am one of their featured experts and contributors, and as with our efforts across all of our partner websites, our mandate is always to educate and empower!

The question posed, is as follows:

How can I take care of mom without compromising her dignity?

“In so many ways she is like a child, she needs help with almost everything. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that the normal her is still insider her brain somewhere and I don’t want to humiliate that part of her.”

Here was my response to her on the forum:

“The Only Thing to Fear, is Fear Itself”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Truer words were never spoken.

Fear in all of its permutations and manifestations is debilitating to both the body and spirit. When such fear is acute, it is even more crushing.

However, one positive and often unintended consequence is when it provides the impetus for personal introspection and growth.

I meet with plenty of families who are fearful. In fact, almost every family experiences some level of trepidation before placing a loved one in a nursing home.

They fear the unknown and they fear the fear itself!

This is completely normal.

Know that your Mom is still there and you are still the daughter who loves her to pieces. You cannot humiliate your Mom, but to simply love her unconditionally, while realizing that she is compromised and that it is not her fault or yours.

Love conquers all!

Godspeed!

——–

Friends,

How would you have responded?

Between minimum wage hikes occurring across the country and the prospect of extending overtime pay to currently exempt workers, senior living providers are facing wage pressures that could take a direct toll on their bottom line.

Most senior living communities already pay more than minimum wage levels by an average of $0.75 to $1.50 per hour, according to Moore Diversified Services (MDS), a Texas-based organization that provides operations analysis, marketing development and investment advisory services. But even a modest increase could result in lower net operating profit margins and more conservative cap rates.

A recent White House proposal aims to increase the minimum pay for overtime-eligible employees from $455 a week to $970 a week, according to the Obama administration. If the proposal goes into effect, salaried employees making up to $50,440 a year will become eligible for overtime compensation. Currently, only hourly and salaried employees making less than $455 a week or $23,660 a year can generally be compensated for hours worked over 40 each week.

Read more.

 

I just read an interesting new article out of California.

IRVINE, CA—Senior housing continues to rise as an asset class, and the industry is catching on. Auction.com reports that deal volume has increased 60% year over year, and as the Baby-Boomer generation hits retirement age, demand is only expected to increase. But is it in danger of being overbuilt?

The firm’s EVP Rick Sharga spoke with GlobeSt.com exclusively about what we should know about this topic.

GlobeSt.com: How much of a threat is oversupply in the senior housing market?

Sharga: There’s a small chance that we might have a short-term oversupply of senior housing as this growing market sorts itself out. But realistically, investments in this sector are simply getting back to more normal levels after a few years of below-average growth. The real question is how good a job the industry will do meeting the future needs for various segments of this category: will there be too much assisted-living inventory and too few nursing homes? Forecasting how much need/growth there might be in each of these sectors is going to be challenging because there’s really no existing model to use as a reference.

Read more

 

Seldom do I create a post around a photo.

In this case, I loved the picture above before I was intrigued by the article.

I hope you’ll enjoy both!

Screaming, howling, red-hot-poker-in-the-eye pain. The impulse to gouge your own eyes out or overdose on sleeping pills — anything to make the pain go away.

Blinking can be so excruciating that some people have had their eyelids partially sewn shut. One patient said the pain felt like shards of glass were jutting from her eyes. “Imagine a knife in your eye. Forever,” wrote another.

Most causes of eye pain — a stray eyelash, a chemical burn, a dirty contact lens — are obvious and short-lived. But what happens if the source isn’t immediately apparent and the agony doesn’t stop? Ophthalmologists have made surprisingly little headway understanding the origins of severe and lasting eye pain. Many doctors, in fact, are outright dismissive of intense eye discomfort, deeming it of secondary importance to vision. Patients are often written off as being hyperbolic, narcissistic or even psychiatric.

At 82, Boston ophthalmologist Perry Rosenthal hears regularly from people who are desperate for answers. Although he no longer sees patients himself, he has become the nerve centre of a small but growing network of researchers and clinicians who are defying conventional wisdom and seeking out new explanations for the often jarring disconnect between brutal symptoms and a lack of clear signs.

Rosenthal’s nearly singular focus on resolving the mystery has frayed professional relationships, forced him to leave his own charity and nearly shut him out of a field in which he was once hailed as a hero. A recent burst of research, however, is prompting a new question about his unorthodox ideas: what if he’s right?

Read more