Nursing Homes Essay Example
Are nursing homes the best option for elderly loved ones? Nursing homes may offer a wonderful home for the ederly, but not every nursing home can. Every nursing home will be run differently in some type of way, it makes it a hard choice when trying to find the right fit for an elderly. The care nursing homes give can be expensive and not everyone can afford that price. When making the choice to put someone you love in a nursing home, it comes with great fear and wondering if they will treat the patient with good care, as well as hoping you can financially afford this, and making sure diseases and viruses don’t affect your loved one.
The care given to patients in nursing homes can vary widely for many reasons. One reason is how the patient acts when receiving care. Some elderly people hate to be cared for; so, if the patient has denied the best care the staff can give them, worse care will be given.
Not only does care range in nursing homes, but also the cost of living at one. The most common form of payment to nursing homes is monthly. Often you are paying a monthly price that includes food, a room and bed, a bathroom and lots more depending on the facility. These monthly payments can be huge amounts of money, nursing homes are an expensive way of living.
To show just how intensely Covid-19 has affected nursing home living conditions, this paragraph will briefly share information focused on this topic. When talking about places like hospitals and nursing, Covid-19 has changed everything for patients and staff. The patients in a nursing home can’t spend the last years of their lives wearing masks, but what if that's the only option. The amount of deaths from Covid 19 in nursing homes in the past two years are absurd. In fact, staff is so affected in these buildings that people are quitting their jobs to take precautions.
To continue on, the organization and care in nursing homes need to be improved so our elderly peers may live a happy ending to their life. As years go on, hopefully what Covid-19 has done to these home living facilities will go away and things can go back to normal. Equally important, that the patients get treated with great care and the pricing of nursing homes becomes more affordable. Follow along to learn more in depth details about nursing homes and the format of how they run daily.
To begin, care shown to patients in a nursing home is affected by the staff and equipment available. The caregiver should do everything to the best of their ability. As stated by author Diane Brannon “Work standardization refers to the extent to which staff perceive that there is a "best way" to proceed in completing a particular task”(Good Work). When choosing to put a loved one in a nursing home be aware of the necessities available around the building. Care in nursing homes can differ in lots of ways especially when it comes to the building, material, and tools being outdated. Responsibility is also huge for caregivers to care for their patients. The same article used before also states, “Productive organizations constantly work at maintaining a reasonable match between responsibility and discretion at each level of the hierarchy”(Brannon). When running a company that needs to be very organized to keep people alive comes with a lot of responsibility and organization.
In addition, the cost to pay for housing, food, and day and night care for someone can be very expensive. Obviously every nursing home can range in price, therefore you get what you pay for. Author Sarah Raes and others state, “When the price increases, nursing homes can recruit more well-trained staff and buy more suited equipment which improves the service quality in nursing homes”(Price and Quality). This information is very important and to sum it up, when paying more money towards a nursing home the quality of all things will be better for the patient.
Just as important, is the information given about how Covid-19 has affected the way patients and staff format in nursing homes. Nursing homes have been in the downfall the past three years due to Covid-19. In-home living places and hospitals had the most deaths from Covid-19 throughout the years. Rachel Snyder wrote, “A large portion of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States have occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care settings, with over 1.3 million confirmed cases and over 137,000 confirmed deaths among residents and staff as of September 12, 2021”(Factors of Covid-19). This means not only patients are dying but also staff members who are risking their lives to take care of ederly people. Stated in the article “Interpreting COVID-19 Deaths¨ is ¨A report published last year by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) highlighted that COVID-19 case counts are more likely to be high in lower quality nursing homes than in higher quality ones.” This information goes back to saying that the care and cleanliness in nursing homes can make a big difference when it comes to sicknesses.
