Something is rotten about long-term care
No amount of goodwill can excuse abuse of our elderly
When the Citizen first broke the news about the punching of a senior citizen by a worker at the Garry J. Armstrong Home, the president of the Family and Friends Council of the nursing home penned a passionate defence of its workers and service.
“The staff is extremely dedicated and chose this career and environment because that is their passion. They derive tremendous satisfaction from the interaction they have with residents and are to be commended for often performing far beyond the norm expected of them … ,” John McCormick wrote.
Reading this, I gave the nursing home and its workers the benefit of the doubt. You don’t tar an entire institution for the actions of one man. But following other agonizing stories of abuse and neglect at Garry J. Armstrong and other spots, there is no doubt something is rotten at some of our long-term-care homes.
No amount of goodwill can excuse the catalogue of abuse, and one might say, cruelty. Particularly odious is the practice of punishing — yes, punishing — people for speaking out against the mistreatment of their loved ones. The Citizen recently quoted two women who were “punished” for airing concerns about the poor treatment of their mothers in an unidentified area long-term-care home. One was escorted from the home by a security guard as her mother, who suffers from dementia, watched in shock. The other was served a trespass notice and told she could no longer stay in her severely disabled mother’s room.
It appears some long-termhome staff simply don’t know the rules of proper care.
One of the women said her mother never received a shower and wasn’t taken to the toilet again after she complained about infection control. Ponder this: People sworn to care for the most vulnerable of us punish a helpless woman for the perceived sins of her daughter. The complaints weren’t unfounded.
An Ontario government investigation into the care of one of the elderly women found that the home failed to comply with provincial legislation in at least five instances. Which means the home failed in its duty of care, the complainant was right to raise the alarm, but she was punished anyway because managers could do that.
Consider that some of the key issues raised by one of the women include the failure of staff to wash their hands and change gloves after changing a patient’s diapers or cleaning feces. As well, staff brought a commode chair to her mother’s room with another patient’s feces on it. Now, if you were taking care of your mother or other loved one, how would you not complain if you witnessed this?
One may say that two cases don’t make an indictment of a given home. Perhaps. But to underscore the gravity of the general situation, Dorothy Asselstine, who has first-hand experience of long-term care, wrote in the Citizen about a “broken system” plagued by abuse and neglect, poor staffing and management. “Too often in inspection reports, you will read that the administrator or director claims to be ignorant of some part of the legislation,” Asselstine writes.
It appears from the Citizen reports that some long-term-home staff in the area simply don’t know the rules of proper care, and that managers don’t know what they are doing or don’t care enough. How else does one explain a support worker bringing a commode chair bearing feces of one patient into the room of another patient? And how it is that the person who gets punished is the one who complains about the unhygienic situation?
It may be time for the Liberal government to seriously consider the NDP suggestion for a broader inquiry into this broken system. Closer to home, city council must speak out against the punishment of complainants by managers. Yes, staff must be protected, but managers shouldn’t be allowed to use punishment to intimidate people and cover their failures.