Assisted Living Nursing Home

Losing the ability to effectively take care of yourself without help can be a difficult fact to accept. Much of this difficulty may stem from the patient’s assumption that they will have to lose much of their freedom in order to move into an assisted living facility. For patients that are in this situation, the services offered by these facilities can prove to be invaluable, but you may not be familiar with these communities. In these cases, the following couple of questions and answers should help you to be better informed about this option.

The skilled nursing facility is a facility that has a medical professional (usually an RN) on duty at all times of the day. The patients that are here are usually faced with a serious illness or major physical needs. The objective is to rehabilitate people to return to either their regular living or to an assisted living, however, some patients may never be able to be rehabilitated due to their medical conditions.

Living in a nursing home can mean for some that they rarely get to meet with loved ones often enough . This can leave the elderly feeling alone and forgotten, but by having regular visitors they would have regular company. Socializing is very important for mental

To begin with, many families decide to place their loved ones under the care of a nursing home to receive some peace of mind. But are they really? Nursing homes aren’t quite what you think; the

Assisted living helps each person value life to its fullest potential. When it comes to making an older individual feel more at home and also be able to focus more on non-stressful activities, they need to be ensured the best care. “Families feel more confident and are less ‘protective’ when there is continuity in staff and they are deemed competent. Staff are more likely to be retained where they feel valued”2 part of the quote which is especially conducive to the argument is, “where they feel valued.” When picking and choosing a nursing home that fits individual the best, and will provide them with the care needed, it is important to make sure that everyone is valued in the process. This quote is important because if the workers are not being taken care of, then they are less enthusiastic and also less likely to give someone’s loved one the care needed and to know what is expected from them. It is assumed that when picking an assisted living home, that the well being of the person and also many other characteristics are taken into

3) The three plagues of nursing home as mentioned by Bill Thomas were boredom, loneliness and helplessness. What came to mind when he outlined them was how much I agreed with him. This is what I have experienced firsthand as a nurse working with the elderly. Many of them are placed in front of the nursing station for the whole shift because of the lack of things to entertain them. For many of them, the day only consists of eating, sleeping, and using the bathroom.

The nursing homes also provide opening hours for resident’s family and friends to come and visit them which prevents social exclusion and isolation. Family and friends can be a vital part of the resident’s emotional and social development.

Hi Amy, great post! I definentaly agree with the idea of independence being incorporated into a nursing home. Like you said it is important for mental and physical health that residents play a role in daily chores and activities. Animals are another great option to allow for independence and companionship.

The Topic of my research paper is How to Start Your Own Assisted Living Business. I choose this topic because I have some experience in the health care field. I am a certified Medical Assistant and I wanted to take my education to the next level. The Health care job market is on high demand and is one of today’s most dynamic fields with a wide range of opportunities. I came to realize that the older you get in this country options for housing, health and personal care services become limited.

In my practice as a social worker in a long term care setting, I have become aware these are the resident who lack to ability to care for themselves due to physical limitations as opposed to their mental limitations. I have also noticed this is the population which has the most difficulty adjusting to living in a nursing home. This seems to be the population which most often displays symptoms of depression and sadness regarding their situation of living in a nursing home, and often times will state they want to discharge home even though they and their families are unable to provide needed care.

“Consider these figures from the National Center on Elder Abuse: An estimated 1-2 million elders are abused annually, only one in 14 cases of elder abuse is reported, Estimates of the frequency of elder abuse range from 2% to 10%” (Sheehan,2011 Para.4). Many families in this day in age are choosing long term care in comparison to homecare for their own personal reasons. If a family is looking into a nursing home for their loved ones there are a few steps to take before choosing a facility. When a family chooses to put their loved one in a nursing home, it is very important to do lots of research on that particular facility, find other families that have used that facility before, visit the facility multiple times, and talk to the residents and the staff.

Skilled Nursing facility(SNFs) serve patients requiring preventive, therapeutic, and rehabilitative nursing care services for non-acute, long-term conditions. Specialized clinical and diagnostic services are obtained outside the nursing home. Most residents are frail and aged and often use canes, walkers, or wheelchairs. Nursing homes also care for a smaller percentage of restorative patients of all ages like a rehabilitation and other residents are in long-term recovery from acute illnesses, but no longer require hospitalization.

In this article, Kane challenges many of the assumptions about long term care and about nursing homes. He begins with the premise that effective long-term care has to meet three different needs which may not be compatible with one another. These three needs are personal care, medical care, and housing. He also discusses a significant indictment of the current nursing home system and his belief that it simply is not appropriate for most elderly people because it strips far too many personal liberties. He believes that this can be traced to the history of the nursing home, which evolved as a type of quasi-hospital, but the trade-off of freedom for access to care that exists in a hospital is not the same underlying social contract that should exist fin a long term care environment. Instead when people seek out nursing homes they are seeking out care and housing, so that the environment is supposed to be one of the benefits, not something to be endured in order to get the benefit. Furthermore, because many nursing homes do both long term care and rehabilitation, he believes that they are overextended.

Traditionally, nursing homes are viewed as homes for the aged. They were architecturally built to resemble hospitals and were organized in a similar fashion. In the late 1970s and 1980s, nursing homes were seen as places that housed the frail, sick, mentally impaired and abandoned elders. Nursing homes were buildings filled with depressed, lonely elders, often these elders were dislocated from their families and were in a state of vulnerability. Images that were associated with nursing homes in the late 1970s and 1980s, often depicted asylums where elders were often strapped down, mistreated and ill cared for. The daily functioning and care that were provided by nursing homes was merely touching the borderline of minimally acceptable in the eyes of the law. Very little emphasis was placed on the quality of care given to the residents of these nursing homes.

Home health care provides one-on-one care. Being in a nursing home facility means that there are going to be multiple residents in need of medical assistance at the same time, limited amount of registered nurses and CNA’s on the floor, and a large space to monitor. “Red flags for nursing home negligence were listed on 5,000 death certificates of nursing home patients in 1999. These include starvation, dehydration, or bedsores as the cause of death.” (Health News, 2011) Home health care is provided in the patient’s home, between just the provider and the single patient which allows appropriate care. “In-home care gives families the confidence and peace knowing their aging loved ones are comfortable at home and receiving professional, compassionate, and personalized care.” (Marak, 2007)