Living in a Nursing Home: Myths and Realities

Myths and Reality are very far apart when it comes actually being placed or living in a nursing home. After working at a couple of private owned nursing facilities and two state funded nursing facilities I was able to see first hand the difference in the two. This also allowed me to eradicate these so called questions or myths.

According to a reprint from the American Health Care Association; "Many myths, or misconceptions, persist about nursing facility life. In the past decade, nursing facilities, like all areas of health care, have changed dramatically in terms of staffing, policies, procedures, and general approach to the needs of their patients. The goals of the long term care profession are to provide both quality care and quality of life in a safe and secure environment. " I will enclose my rebuttal to this statement later as this of course I believe is a Marketing technique to try to cover up the bad publicity that nursing homes have gotten over that past years for their lack of care.

In the past and still now people still have many ideas or myths about nursing homes. Here is a list of what are some of the common myths are: A nursing facility is like a hospital. All nursing facility residents are confused. I will have no privacy in a nursing facility. If I enter a nursing facility, I will never go home. If I enter a nursing facility, I will surrender my right to make decisions. Nursing facilities have an unpleasant odor. Nursing facility residents do not receive adequate care. Husbands and wives must live apart from one another in a nursing facility. Nursing facility residents aren't visited regularly by family and friends. The food is terrible in nursing facilities. These are all things that have been thrown out there and that have been listed by multiple sites on the internet, and it is my goal to address each one of them in this paper.

Is a nursing facility like a hospital? No, many residents enter the facility after they have left a hospital. It can be considered to be an after care or an extension of care. The concept of a nursing home is to be just that a Home setting. A more relaxed atmosphere so that the patient will be more at ease and will start to get back into a routine of things.

During the stay the patient will interact with other patients. The nursing facility will put together outings to encourage the patients to be more physical, social, and mentally active. Each patient of course is different and it is hard to pinpoint just what activities each patient might want to join in on. That is why there is always something planned and going on in a good nursing home.

Are all nursing facility residents confused? No, they are not all confused. Can they be a bit slower with age? Yes. As you get older your body tends to get tired easier and this allows you to mentally slow down also. This is what happens to these patients in the facility.

The main problem is the patients that need true medical attention. These are the ones that have to be on prescription medication for memory loss and even have worse problems like Alzheimer's. The difference is these patients are not normally just put out in a normal area of the nursing facility but yet in another wing and watched a bit closer. They need more specialized care because their condition is irreversible.

Will I have privacy in a nursing facility? There is actually no privacy in a nursing home. The reason behind this is it is so hard to find a good balance between security and supervision it is virtually impossible to respect the privacy of a patients privacy. A patients room might be considered to be a private area, but in all the rooms I have ever been in not one of them has ever had a lock nor can it ever have a lock. Plus, there is always some sort of light and noise levels that are constantly unacceptable. There is no way to have a private conversation, because everything is within earshot of another resident.

If I enter a nursing facility, will I ever go home? The goal of every nursing facility is to get that patent back to rehabilitated status so that they can go back to their community and function. Whether or not this happens is completely up to higher calling I would have to say. As far as what I have seen, and I hate to say it. Only two patients that I have come into contact with out of the five nursing facilities that I have worked at have come in and left to go back to live in their own home.

If I enter a nursing facility, will I surrender my right to make decisions? No, you will still have that right unless you decide to give up that right. Sometimes, a patient will decide to give up this right. They might decide that one of their children, a brother, sister, relative, or whomever might be a better choice to make their decisions for them. At that point and only at that point will their decisions be made by someone else.

Do nursing facilities have an unpleasant odor? You would think that with all the technology that we have in today's nursing facilities they would be able to find away to kill that lingering smell but my personal experience will have to say yes. Even after the ones that I have worked in have been cleaned the smell is there. I have been in probably forty different facilities between here and Mississippi and they all have that smell.

Do Nursing facilities residents receive adequate care? This is a tough question. The news reports about this all time about bad care in nursing facilities. Then on the other hand seeing it first hand it makes it even worse to answer this question. Some facilities are better care givers than others. The private facilities where much better about their care than the state funded ones.

My experience in the state funded one is this. I became an LVN because I wanted to make a difference and care for patients. When I worked at both of these facilities I was afraid everyday of losing

my license because of all the wrong practices that we were told to do. Patients were not getting taken care of. Family members dosing their loved ones. Family members having to bathe their loved one. Family members performing all kinds of tasks that should have been done by staff members. This made me decide real quick that I had to leave, and I could never work in a facility like this ever again and that I had to just re-enlist in the Air Force for another 4 years because the civilian world was just not in it for me.

Husband and wives must live apart from one another in a nursing facility? Not true. They can even share the same room. In fact, the patient's bill of rights mandates that this be permitted in facilities certified to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. In some cases it is even a better way for the two