Life on Campus
I haven’t been on my soapbox in a while, however, this time I’m on it so I can reach in and stir the pot. Basically, I’m looking for an answer to, “Why do you think that is? And why has nobody challenged it?” Here’s the issue at hand:
I’ve often thought life in a nursing home in many ways is like life in the college dorms and campus. They are environments constructed by an organization for people of a specific age group (generally) and a specific situation. Living in these environments, you have a roommate who you very likely did not know before you got there. There’s the dining room and cafeteria. And pretty much everything you need is right on campus: drug store, library, places for socializing and entertainment such as movie theater, coffee shop or recreation center, a place to worship, laundry, clinic, security, etc. The major stuff like taking care of the landscaping and green space, cleaning of common areas and general building maintenance are taken care of as well. (And talk about departmental silos- but that is getting off the point.) The idea is that the burden of the chores and errands of daily living are lessened so that focus, time and attention can be spent on other things. In college, it is studying, of course, and in a nursing home, it is the things that take a little more time and effort than they used to.
However, we know that for college students, time spared from daily tasks is also spent on those “new life experiences” and, well, having a good time! Why should it be different for those living in nursing homes? Of course, new experiences and having a good time means very different things to people in their twenties as opposed to folks in their eighties, but it seems so odd for me that in these very similar environments, one inspires activity and growth while the other centers on function (or dysfunction). I don’t think it is the age of the people living within. I think it is the expectations we all have about what is supposed to go on there. In fact, it seems the expectations should be reversed. College kids are going to grow and be active on their own, they don’t need a special environment for that. What they need to do at that stage in life, is learn to function in the “real world.” Whereas, elders are pros at functioning in the real world, but are not in a time of life we generally think of as full of activity and growth like our twenties.
What do you think? How can we change the expectations of what living in a nursing home should be to match the richness of the college experience?
3 Comments:
To enrich the lives of individuals in nursing homes is not an easy as layman perceive. Most individuals that need nursing home placement have multiple layers of physical, funtional, and emotional deficits that impact their ability to maintain quality of life on their own. Nursing home staff are trained and skilled in areas of enrichment and work deligently to make each minute count. Many different assessment tools are utilized to determine the pyschosocial needs of each individual in an effort to assist them in achieving or experiencing quality of life. Family members should take their time when making the decision to place their loved one, do their home work, go online to see how the state rates each nursing home and so forth. If families are involved from the beginning, and become an active part of care planning along side the nursing home staff, quality of life is achieved. Quality is perceived differently from one individual to the next. Everyone works together for the good of all.
Oh PLEASE, Anonymous! You say:
>>...and work deligently to make each minute count.<<
Count for WHAT? Making money for Manor Care or Golden Living?? Is that why so many nursing homes have rows of old people in wheelchairs lining the hallways, parked there for hours like so many used cars, in the name of "socialization"? Is that why call bells go unanswered, sometimes for hours, and on average over half of those admitted to nursing homes soon become incontinent?
>>Family members should take their time when making the decision to place their loved one, do their home work, go online to see how the state rates each nursing home and so forth.<<
Most people admitted to nursing homes have NO CHOICE AT ALL where they go. They are "dumped" there at the end of a hospital stay at the will of some hospital social worker whose job it is to turn the beds over. Oh sure, you can "choose" where you go if you have $7000 a month or more to private pay, but if you are on Medicare or Medicaid and being discharged from a hospital you pretty much have to go wherever they find a bed. Once that discharge notice comes, you either go where they send you or start paying the hospital about 2-grand a day.
SOME "CHOICE"!
Yes, it is true that the picture painted by Anonymous 1 is not the case at all nursing homes. But it is the goal of the culture change movement which Anonymous 2, as well as others, can learn a bit about in this YouTube clip put out by the Commonwealth Fund http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGosRqfnH74. The goal is the transformation of traditional, institutional for-profit AND non-profit facilities into real homes for elders.
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