Shame on us for letting these cruelties happen
Shame on us.
We should cover our faces in disgrace for the horrors and humiliations heaped on our frail elderly in long-term-care homes.
A provincial Conservative government that slashed $34 million from those facilities in its first budget after coming to power under Premier Doug Ford. But also governments of all political stripes that preceded the Tories.
Inspections, reduced, that clearly haven’t met their most basic duties.
Sloppy and stroppy staff and lack of management oversight.
Even families that have parked their parents and grandparents in facilities with scarcely any continuing attention. Out of sight and out of mind. Though many, likely most, have tried, too often failed, to advocate for their loved ones. Impotent and helpless, banging their heads against the anvil of bureaucracy.
Clearly, not allowing family members into long-term-care homes that have suffered outbreaks during the coronavirus pandemic removed a crucial membrane of intimate vigilance when it was most urgently needed. In every way possible, including public health directives, we’ve failed our most vulnerable population. Because, as much as we feign concern, perhaps actually mean it, the institutional will and public funding hasn’t been there to make a whit of systemic difference.
“Aggressiveness when changing incontinence product, not stopping or slowing when resident complained of pain, pulling residents, aggressive transfers impacting resident ability to participate in care as able (roll self in bed), degrading or inappropriate comments direct at residents.” Eatonville Care Centre.
We know, because the military — Lord love them — has told us in blunt language, reported the grotesque inefficiencies and disregard at five Ontario long-term-care settings where servicemen and women have been deployed since April 28. At that point, there were outbreaks at 170 of the province’s long-term-care homes, 2,340 positive COVID-19 cases and 497 resident deaths. It had been almost six weeks since Ontario had declared a state of emergency.
We well knew the aged, many with underlying conditions, were most at risk. We well knew that staffing levels had dropped dangerously because many employees, worried about their own health, had simply stopped reporting for work. We well knew that overwhelmed personal support workers were not adequately trained to handle the demands of a relentlessly infectious crisis.
Yet we mandated that the afflicted elderly die alone, terrified, often without cognitive comprehension and without the comfort of a loved one nearby.
This is on all of us for not screaming bloody murder.
“Insect infestation noted within LTC – ants and cockroaches and unknown observed.” Hawthorne Place Care Centre.
Canadian Armed Forces personnel have documented it, over the signature of Brigadier General C.J.J. Mialkowski in a scathing report publicly released Tuesday. But not all of it. The troops, including medical personnel, have only been called in by five GTA longterm-care homes that asked for help to cope — out of 630 LTC homes in the province where 70,000 elderly reside.
More than 200 residents have died in the five homes. One (1) death is under investigation by the Ontario coroner’s office.
“It’s appalling, it’s disgusting,” said the premier.
“I was sad. I was shocked. I was disappointed. I was angry,” said the prime minister.
Except nobody should be shocked, not even by the gutwrenching details in the report. And no long-term-care home, no government, no social agency should have been caught flatfooted by the pandemic’s ravages because everyone had the ghastly evidence of what had befallen China and Italy.
“Patients being left in beds soiled in diapers…incident that appeared to have contributed in patient death (code blue due choking during feeding while supine – staff unable to dislodge food or revive resident…incident of likely fractured hip not addressed by staff… multiple falls without required assessments following fall … walking aids being removed, or mattresses set on floor as patients were unable to stand from that low position (to prevent them from wandering the facility)…” Orchard Villa.
Animals are better tended in shelters.
Mistreatment, verbal and physical abuse, gross neglect, ambulatory residents wandering the halls of outbreak homes, residents crying for help, their pitiful pleadings unheeded for hours, residents not bathed for weeks, residents force-fed and choking, wounds and bedsores left uncared for, residents needlessly sedated out of their skulls, nurses avoiding shrouding and postmortem care of deceased patients, exhausted and burned out PSWs.
This is what we’ve allowed to unfold with eyes wide open. History will judge us harshly. The present judges us harshly.
Why did it take soldiers parachuted into these LTCs — 1,671 troops deployed to the five Ontario institutions and 25 facilities in Quebec — to delineate the agonies and abominations — no fog of war in the scathing report — rather than public health authorities and institutional gatekeepers?
How dare the prime minister profess the report’s contents are “extremely troubling” or the premier declare it was the most gut-wrenching document he’d ever rest — as if either can claim to have been blindsided by the deplorable findings.
“Significant number of residents have pressure ulcers, stage 2, 3 and 4… as a result of prolonged bed rest… 15 residents having wounds that require significant care plan; wound dressing orders have not been updated nor adhered to by agency staff causing further degradation of wound… RPN are using the wrong bandages and non-sterile dressings for packing…” Altamont Care Community.
These aren’t allegations, as media reports have framed it. They’re eyes-on observations.
The minister of long-term care, herself a former physician in long-term care, should be fired immediately. Inspectors who may have been aware of these godawful conditions — and much of the negligence predates the pandemic; families have been saying so for decades — should be sent packing. Criminal investigations should be opened into particularly concerning deaths, as Durham Region has assigned a detective, CP24 has reported, to look into one specific fatality. A coroner’s inquest must be called, apart from whatever shape the province’s “independent commission” into long-term-care facilities, announced last week, may take.
They’re scrap, old people. If we could flatten and dispose of them in wrecking lots like we do cars, some would look away, I fear, at least tacitly consent, just as we’ve codified assisted dying — nudge with a needle.
The why of it says more about us, our society, than it does about the homes where these poor souls are warehoused, both the for-profit and nonprofit establishments. We may claim to love and respect the generations that came before us but, at best, only individually; our parents, our grandparents. Collectively, they are an expensive and burdensome demographic, dispensable, the indignities they absorb too easy to marginalize. They linger too long with dementia and complicated infirmities. They are no longer of any use, infantilized, left to the distracted mercies of strangers.
“Leaving food in a resident’s mouth while they are sleeping; aggressively repositioning a resident; improper use of lifts; not assisting residents during meals (staff would rather write the resident refused to eat, rather than helping them.) Holland Christian Homes (Grace Manor).
Take a hard aghast look. Because that might very well be you and me some day. Forgotten, hollowed out by age and ailments.
At a retirement home in Hamilton earlier this month, a resident was left behind, overlooked, when the facility was evacuated because of a COVID-19 outbreak. The man was left abandoned in the home — despite security and cleaning staff apparently still on the premises — for 18 hours, management unaware until contacted by worried family members who could find no record of him at the hospital where residents had been transferred.
Invisible.
“People are often sedated with narcotics when they are likely just sad or depressed…’” Eatonville. Who wouldn’t be sad? Who wouldn’t be depressed? Who wouldn’t pray for a merciful release?
Don’t grow old.