Posted on 05/25/2011 9:44:57 PM PDT by Nachum
Doctors are prescribing drinking water for neglected elderly patients to stop them dying of thirst in hospital. The measure – to remind nurses of the most basic necessity – is revealed in a damning report on pensioner care in NHS wards. Some trusts are neglecting the elderly on such a fundamental level their wards could face closure orders. The snapshot study, triggered by a Mail campaign, found staff routinely ignored patients’ calls for help and forgot to check that they had had enough to eat and drink.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
After my father’s brain surgery, he spent some time in a nursing home (a move I was very much against, but had no say about).
What I saw there was very sad. My Grandparents ended up there, but only when it was the last resort.
Also, mine at #60.
>>Make that water hoarding
Why does that bring to mind “Dune” and rendering people down for their water? I can see these marxist sickos coming up with something like that—”Your water belongs to the collective”.
They have, and soon we will have, entrusted the care of their parents and grandparents to people without the common sense to take care of a dog or cat.Where do they find people like that?
NOT TRUE! Resources do exist to care for our elderly.
Just go down to the welfare office and see where our resources are going. Walk into any school and see the illegals who are getting free education. Go into any prison or police station and see the resources being thrown at crime in this country. Go into any hospital and see the percentage of illegals (and prisoners) getting dialysis and transplants ahead of the rest of us.
We have the resources.
“how about requiring families to take in their elderly and care for them themselves, instead of expecting the govt to provide?.......not there’s an idea....”
Our children,unfortunately, don’t feel that it is their responsibility. Please, don’t get me started. I once said to a co worker that I didn’t have to be concerned about being in a nursing home because my children would take care of me. She laughted at me and said not to count on it. Funny she knew my children better than I did. She was right.
Try to arrange to have someone visit this relative regularly. When hospitals are short staffed, those who get visitors are cared for first.
I am surprised no one has commented on Hospice and end of life care. It is quite common to restrict water intake for those with terminal disease.
I think the concrn here is not medically necessary restriction of oral intake, but actual neglect. If the NHS doctors in Britain are having to prescribe water to make nure nurses don't forget, there's a real problem.
The key thing is to "accompany" the dying. To be with them, sensitive to their individual needs. The presence of an alert, informed loved one, means everything.
(In my father's case, a thousand blessings upon my husband, who opened heart and home to my dear father in his declinign years and his time of passing on. A thousand blessings!)
My parents flew there from the west coast to see her this weekend. We are surprised she is hanging on. She does have visitors but her only son lives far away too and can only leave his job a week at a time. :(
You really hurt me. That was cruel of you. She is a great aunt and I love her very much but she has always lived in NY and I live in LA. I have 3 kids and pregnant with a 4 th so I can’t be in NY caring for her. I will always be there for my own parents. I think you were needlessly cruel to me.
It's worse! A certain percentage of Economy class passengers are never loaded in a fuel saving measure. They put up inflatable dummies in the seats so no one gets suspicious.
Good for you Yaelle in pushing back against the flippant remarks directed to you.
I hope an apology is forthcoming
It has become a commie and diversity (ie muslim) hellhole.
Very, very sad and I hope with all my heart it turns around.
You’re correct. I think that’s one of the measures of a culture’s quality. I was venting a little about the widespread American habit of warehousing human beings. Out of sight, out of mind.
Exactly. Every person respected because every person is in essence an eternal soul created by God. Regardless of health, beauty or any other ephemeral condition.
Compassion, mercy, duty, responsibility - these are the human qualities that are now gone by the wayside, in the main. The values pushed now are aggression, being a good sex object, crassness and profaneness, harshness, and so on.
I like Edmund Burke’s statment:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites—in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
— Edmund Burke
And about this advice from George Washington:
“[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and
that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible,
and your conduct here may stamp your character through life.
It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not
only to be learned but virtuous.”
— George Washington (letter to Steptoe Washington, 5 December
1790)
There's an old Russian saying, the dog has a thousand reasons to hump its own mother.
No grandma in my family ever went to a nursing home, and none ever will while I have say. We care for our own.
There is very little humanity in humanity.
Never be in a hospital without an advocate, to remind the nurse AND Doctor to wash their hands BEFORE handling ANYTHING in the room. Bust their butt about it and if you have difficulty getting it across, stop in at the Administrators Office.
MRSA is a staph infection that kills too many patients every day..
“so how many years did your husbands grandmother LIVE in that awful nursing home?....at least 4 ....and how OLD was she?...and WHY was she in a nursing home?....
did you want her to have one nurse....and its not nurses..its nurses aids....for all HER needs?....or were the other patients to be ignored....
did she have diabetes?...heart failure?...renal failure?...was she an aspirator?....not able to eat or drink enough....???
did you want her on tube feedings?
WHY did NO family take her home?....complain all you want...but if family is not going to take responsibility, than there is no room to criticize....
Why did the family leave grandma in such a rotten place with such rotten caregivers?....”
Frankly you sound rude. You imply crap rather than ask questions.
1) She lived there for five years, 94 when she passed away. She was in the home because she fell all of the time. She wouldn’t use a wheel chair - and would fall often. Her daughter couldn’t care for her-she herself being ill. So, she went in the BEST nursing home in this area - with her own consent.
2) She was actually very healthy when she entered, with the exception of the problem with falling. She had diabetes - managed by diet only, no meds required. She was in the minimal care facility UNTIL her personal bank account dropped to below $100,000. THEN the staff Dr. determined she should go into the full care facility - they claimed they couldn’t put a “fall alarm” on her if she wasn’t in that section.
3)Oh I expect ALL the other patients should have been completely ignored for her sake. Yes I do.
The nurses were responsible for her care. The aides were responsible for her comfort. Aids don’t administer medical care.
4)She began having difficultly drinking in the last year, they added a thickener to the water to help her so that she didn’t gag as much. We were assured that she was doing well with that.
5)She did not need any medical equipment.
6)Perhaps she would have lived had she been given an IV once she had shown signs of dehydration or distress. The medical staff said NOTHING about her being in serious condition, except to call her daughter about fifteen hours before she died, and tell her that her mothers blood pressure was low.
7)You seem to think that the world allows for people to do whatever they want with any situation that pops up. Get over that notion. No family took her home because it was impossible to do so.
Since she was paying good money to be cared for, she should have been cared for properly. There was no excuse for that woman to have died from dehydration.
8)Again - this was rated the best nursing care facility in our region. Since they are supposed to care for the patients, one expects them to do so.
“Grandma” was looked after decently until she ran out of her own money. Then she had to sign up for medi-caid. We still made sure to keep her private med insurance and prescriptions paid for privately. But sad to say after she went on the state rolls, she went downhill pretty quickly. Within six months she was dead. Of DEHYDRATION.
“A woman I know cares for her elderly grandmother at home, along with homeschooling her two or three children. I don’t think her grandma is bedridden but does need someone at home with her all the time.”
Her family consisted of her daughter & son-in-law, and her grandson, my husband. So unfortunately no one could care for her at home. My husband and I were married about three years after she went in, but prior I had tried to convince them that perhaps a private home run by a professional caregiver would be better. I can’t think of what they are called - but they take in three or four ambulatory folks. There are a few of those in our area that have sterling reputations.
Sadly, with most families having both hub/wife working, no one is there to look after the elderly. She would have been left to her own devices ten + hours out of each day if she had been with us, which wouldn’t have worked anyway. Plus, it was her decision to stay in the nursing home.
When she first went, she was in “assisted care”, and she had a nice private room, with her own furniture, etc.
The “full care” facilities were totally different.
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