A SCATHING INDICTMENT OF HOW WE TREAT OUR ELDERLY
Neglected No More:
The Urgent Need to Improve The Lives of Canada's Elders after the Pandemic By André Picard Random House Canada
When news breaks about Canadian elders, the news is often very bad.
As Globe and Mail journalist André Picard wryly notes in the introduction to his thoughtful, measured but nonetheless scathing indictment of how Canadians treat our aged, we most often hear about these forgotten elders when something dire occurs.
Consider the lethal 2014 fire at Residence de Havre in L'isleverte, Que., or the lurid murder trial of Ontario long-term care nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, convicted of killing eight patients.
And those horrors occurred before the COVID-19 pandemic scythed through Canada's longterm care homes, leaving far too many seniors to suffer and die.
COVID simply made an already bad situation far worse.
For example, last year at the Residence Herron in Dorval, Que., when public health workers responded to a complaint, 13 of 15 staff had quit or fled. The remaining pair of workers were left to “care” for more than 130 patients.
By the end of the month, 31 patients had died.
By last September, 82 per cent of Canada's pandemic deaths had occurred in homes for the elderly, twice the average reported across the OECD. And while the current national vaccination campaign has properly focused on inoculating staff and residents in residences for the elderly, thus reducing COVID risks there, lethal outbreaks continue to occur.
Early this year the prestigious Lancet magazine reported that 55 per cent of Canadian COVID deaths have occurred in longterm care residences. We have been failing in our duty to cherish and protect the elderly for a long time, and even absent the pandemic, a case for a full reform of elder care in the country is compelling.
Picard suggests that sweeping increases in staffing across the sector will be needed, with an end to the union busting by private-sector employers that has forced many health care workers to “stack” several parttime jobs, none of which provide the benefits associated with full-time work. This pattern of precarious work from residence to residence clearly played a role
in spreading COVID in long-term care facilities.
Picard also argues that new facilities, smaller and less institutional, should be part of our eldercare reforms. Paid nurse navigator positions should be created, he says, to help patients and families cope with the intricacies of the eldercare system.
All of his suggestions make sense. We should all hope and demand that he'll be heeded.
Highly recommended.
Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He was a Handydart driver for 20 years and has written extensively on health policy issues. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net