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Staffing Shortages and Resident Quality of Care
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Posted 2 months ago It is apparent that many nursing homes have experienced shortages of staffing and whether it is a high quality home vs. a lower quality home the quality of care is inevitably lowered in qualitative and quantitative ways; it needs to be addressed more often by our legislatures in a more proactive manner. The more people who complain to their legislatures about the current required staffing levels in all nursing homes the sooner it will be recognized as a crisis. The incoming "baby boomers" are going to put a crunch on resources like never experienced in the history of nursing care facilities. If you read this consider writing to your congressman/woman and let them know that this concerns you. This may even affect you, your parents, sisters, brothers, and dear friends sooner than you can say the words, "not enough"..... |
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| Posted about 1 month ago Staffing is a major problem in the LTC facility I work for. Frequent call-ins & no shows make it difficult for dependable staff as well as the residents we chose to care for. It seems reasonable to me that if everyone would come to work when they are scheduled, the work wouldn't be so hard that a person would dread coming to work at all. Also, when assessing number of staff needed per resident, acuity should be taken into account, not just per diem, if we are to provide adequate care to all of our residents. I think this needs to be mandated for all facilities. When I ran a home daycare, if I had any babies in care, I wasn't allowed as many older children without hiring extra help because babies require more care. The same should be true with high acuity residents. All our elderly deserve the highest standard of care we can provide but it's difficult to provide adequate care to a low acuity resident if most of your staff's time is spent with a more demanding resident. This increases frustration in staff & can contribute to elder abuse & neglect. I feel this problem could be avoided for the most part if we were to staff according to level of acuity rather than per diem. |
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| Posted about 1 month ago I agree with both your comments but no matter how much you try to overstaff to meet the needs ,people call in. Unfortunately,it has to come from peer pressure.I have been in LTC as a DON,ADMIN and part owner of 2 facilities and of course,i only want quality care. I have domne many hours of research on this,tried various solutions and the only one that really worked was peer pressure...LOL..BTW tcollins...I am a baby boomer...:) Drew |