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Well, "best practices" for me would be one heckofa lot sooner than an hour, I'll tell you that much. Thirty minutes to answer a call button is terrible, in my opinion. I wasn't there very long on days when I would go and assess this patient but I was there enough to see how things were done.
Consequently, the management has an obligation to monitor the waiting time from pressing the call light to the moment that a nursing staff member answers in person. Supervisors can easily find out if these times are too long and take corrective action. However, one might say hat the long waiting times are a symptom of the nursing shortages. That may be so in many cases, but when the situation becomes dangerous with patients being unattended after they have called for help, the hospital managers must regard this as intolerable and take action. One solution is to have a page automatically go out to the nursing supervisor whenever a call light is on for more than three minutes.
Improving call bell response times
Ive seen staff hit, kicked, cussed, called stupid, spit on, etc. Ive see family members be unrealistic in there family members care and be so rude and hateful to staff that they leave in tears swearing never to do this job again. Overall I see more abuse toward staff that anything and most of them are paid minimum wage and work two jobs to make it.
When I see this I encourage them to find something else. I see staff show lack of compassion and consideration to the residents, Ive never myself visually observed deliberate abuse. Ive overheard some insensitive statements made to family and residents but no physical abuse from staff, not saying it may not happen. I have though seen and heard many abuses from familly and residents toward these staff members who have the hardest job in the facility.
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But start with his "usual" nurse and see if you can get an explanation and better yet improvement. I was told by an aide when I was allowed to use the call light and when I was not allowed to use the call light. Sad but the problem is lack of staff, just like hospitals. Profits, not getting payment by Medicaid, all of these things are what is part of the problem with our medical system. Veronica91, I don't know about NYS, but that is not the case everywhere!
This is our first/only experience with a nursing home, and we're not sure exactly what we should be expecting. Current time differences between locations around the world... Time.is displays exact, official atomic clock time for any time zone in 57 languages.
Call Lights. How Should Staff Respond?
A lady at my aunts nh has toenails about 1/2 an inch long and are beginning to turn into rounded claws . I thought my caregiving days were over when aunt went into nh . Her personal and emotional comfort are still very much reliant on myself and pia .. I hate the idea of nursing homes and honestly pray with all my heart I'm dead before ever seeing the age I'd be put into one. The best way to deal with this might be for your mom to be on a toileting schedule, i.e., taken to the toilet every 2 hours. I would also ask straight out what the company policy is about the time allowed to answer, they all have some criteria for this.
I recently had a problem with the facility my MIL was in. She had COPD and started exhibiting signs and symptoms of upper respiratory infection. The nurses and PA waited until she went into respiratory distress to send her to the ER. The day before they sent her out my husband asked the PA to send her out and she told him that her chest X-ray was clear and she was waiting for blood work to come back.
We could bring our love ones home and we hire our own nursing staff, but I bet call buttons or bells rung wouldn't get immediate attention, either. When my husband was in the hospital, they enforced a “No-pass” zone. No matter what staff member was passing by the room, if the light was on, they stopped in the room.
In all the homes I have been to you would not find an administrator or DON or floor nurse who would not respond and investigate the issue. Sometimes actions are taken from the investigation that all are not aware of if they determine an infraction was done. As a former nurse in a long term care facility, if my aides did not answer a call light within 5 minutes to at least see what was needed and ask for help if busy, I would have had a fit.
I made meticulous documentation and stayed in touch with the family. I would speak to the family after my assessments and if I let them know what I saw was objectionable the family would high-tail it up there to see what was going on. I can't tell you how many times that happened.
She may already be on a schedule that’s just not obvious so you need to find that out too. My mother with MCI and short term memory problems wouldn't/couldn't use the panic buttons on the security system to summons help - either the little pendent around her neck or the larger wall mountable button. Those buttons just were not part of my mother's life during the years she was an active adult and following cognitive decline she never could remember to use them. Mom still understands what she reads, so I printed HELP labels and pasted them to the wall mountable button.
We took dad out of the nursing home after 2 weeks and brought him home where he passed away 2 weeks later. For those 2 weeks though dad was taken care of the way every elderly person deserves to be cared for. There may be some really good nursign homes out there but I have never heard a good story about any of them. The bottom line is that hospital and nursing facility patients whose lives depend on nursing staff members are in their beds most of the time unattended and out of sight. Their only life line is a small plastic button.
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The nurse who is usually assigned to him on that shift? I think that is the order of contacting them. Also be sure to attend the care conferences for your Dad and bring it up there.
Private duty antagonizes staff for some reason. Keep that in mind if you have private caregivers with your loved one in a NH. But I can tell you that the residents that had families that visited, that complained and check on things, you were told to make sure you did this or that because the family would be there. Since you are happy with the nursing home in other areas, I think this is one where you let it go.
