Distress and fear for our elderly
SO WHEN DID WE DECIDE IT WAS OKAY FOR DISABLED AND ELDERLY PEOPLE TO DIE, TO BE A DAILY COVID STATISTIC?
AGED care staff are sobbing at the end of their shifts because they can only do “emergency work” and no longer sit and help their elderly residents during the Omicron wave.
The Bulletin has compiled a list of Covid cases in the aged care sector, detailing 400 positive tests in about 30 facilities.
The worst case scenario shows up to 50 residents and staff at one location are infected.
At least six elderly people have died, the latest reported two-week window shows.
United Workers Union national aged care director Carolyn Smith said many facilities had 20-30 per cent of staff off work.
“They’re (the staff) talking about breaking down at the end of their shift because they couldn’t look after the people in their care, they had too many people to look after,” she said.
“They could do the absolute emergencies, they could pick people up who’d fallen, they might get food to people.
“But they couldn’t sit with them and make sure they ate it, which if they’ve got dementia often means they don’t.
“Perhaps they’re missing showering people, taking longer to change incontinence pads. It’s just really, really heartbreaking and very disappointing this is happening to senior Australians.”
Queensland Health statistics show more than 150 people in Queensland have died of Covid-19 in January. The majority were aged over 60.
“There’s just a really nasty undertone of disrespect for older Australians,” Ms Smith said.
“Every person is someone’s grandma, is someone’s sister, is someone’s father. That family is going to be grieving.
“I was really moved talking to someone whose mother had died in aged care in her late 80s. She was 89 but it wasn’t her time to go, she was still having a good life.
“I think that is why the federal government hasn’t felt the pressure to step up and be responsible for aged care, and it’s pretty horrifying that most facilities don’t have daily RATS.
“That means those staff carry that huge emotional load of, ‘am I going to kill someone I care for every day’.”
Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union (QNMU) secretary Beth Mohle said they had repeatedly called on the federal government to make “urgent changes” to protect vulnerable aged care residents.
“Fit testing (for masks) should have occurred,” she said.
“We highlighted this issue when the pandemic began some two years ago and have done so again since.
“We also raised the fact some of Queensland’s major private aged care providers were cutting staff in the midst of the pandemic.
“In late 2021, the QNMU wrote to the commonwealth Department of Health, chief medical officer and Safework Queensland outlining serious concerns that private aged care staff and others in the private sector had not been fit tested for N95 and P2 masks.
“The QNMU has also repeatedly called for the introduction of federal safe-staffing laws to ensure a minimum one registered nurse (RN) is on site at a private aged care facility at all times.
“These protections would have helped ensure the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable aged care residents on the Gold Coast and throughout Queensland and Australia both during the pandemic and every day. It’s our belief the federal government has again failed to properly protect elderly Australians in private aged care.
“The federal government and Prime Minister Scott
Morrison are responsible for conditions in more than 2000 private aged care facilities nationwide.”
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