Government practices force neglect of elders
We all grow old -- what will you do when it's your turn? (Photo from Hospital Employees’ Union)
A few years ago the Liberal government cut back the number of long-term care beds. That now means that if an elderly person falls and breaks a hip they end up in the hospital. If the break means that they can no longer live on their own, then they go on a waiting list to get into Columbia House. In the meantime, they are staying in hospital — taking up a bed that someone else might need. Some of these patients are ending up ‘living’ in hospital for months, maybe even a year or so. Our hospital used to have 13 beds. Now it has 8. That was also part of the Liberal cutbacks.
So let’s say that you have this elderly person in the hospital and a long-term care space becomes available in Golden. The patient has to take it or they get moved to the bottom of the waiting list. They are forced to leave their community and go to Golden where they have no family, no friends, no familiarity. Then they must wait there until a space becomes available back home. This may take 2 months or 2 years. It depends on how quickly people here die off. In the meantime, this ‘valley pioneer’ is likely to die in a strange place all alone.
Another issue around seniors’ care is the level of staffing in long-term care facilities. The government has set 3.4 hours per day as ’sufficient’ care time. That means that a resident at Columbia House will have interaction with a staff person for at best 3.4 hours in a day. That includes dressing, toileting, feeding, changing, medication, wound care — any kind of contact.
There are 35 residents at Columbia House and it’s separated into 3 wings, one of which is a locked dementia ward for aggressive patients or those who are at risk for elopement. Each wing has, on average, 1.5 staff at a time. When they are working that short staffed, obviously no resident actually gets that so-called ’sufficient’ 3.4 hours of care. And I think allocating only 3 hours of care to anyone is disgraceful to begin with.
Feeding one person can take a half hour. Dressing some takes a half hour. Toileting is about 20 minutes. How can anyone give quality care under those restrictions!? It certainly leaves no time to just sit and hold the hand of a frail and lonely old person.
Here is another issue. Our hospital has a fully functioning kitchen. The cooks used to make wonderful, healthy and nutritious meals. Now all meals are trucked in, frozen, from Kelowna. The hospital has a sterilizing room with all the equipment, but now supplies are trucked to (I think) Cranbrook for sterilizing. There are laundry facilities in the basement, but now all laundry gets trucked to Nelson.
These are all jobs that were lost here in Invermere. And in this economic and environmental climate how much sense does it make to truck stuff around the province?
Submitted by Chris Snyder.
The state of seniors’ care in B.C. affects all of us
Have you had trouble finding a long-term care bed for a frail parent who requires 24/7 care? Can you afford extra fees and charges? Has someone in your family had their surgery cancelled because a shortage of long-term care beds left seniors waiting in hard-to-get hospital beds?
The truth is that we’re all affected by the crisis in seniors’ care in British Columbia, and the crisis is getting worse. Families are worried that their loved ones in long-term care aren’t receiving enough hands-on care to keep them healthy and engaged.
Communities large and small are watching as the public and non-profit care homes they built are closed, to be replaced with private, for-profit facilities. And seniors can’t get the support they need to live safely and independently in their own homes.
You can send a message to the premier, health minister, opposition leader and your MLA about the state of seniors’ care in B.C. by visiting the website at www.StandUPforSeniorsCare.ca.
We also hope to have some great commentary here from our MLA and candidates on this issue in preparation for the upcoming election.
I am also a concerned LPN and what Chris speaks of is truth put nicely. I’ll never forget working a night shift, where the staff to resident ratio is 2 to 35, and hearing a resident fall on the floor and start crying. I was physically unable to go to her, and help her, as I was trying to keep another resident safe. He was being verbally and physically abusive, and he was unable to walk (due to health problems) … needless to say he was still trying to climb out of the chair and do so. It is a treacherous and haunting position to be in. I have to decide everyday how to divide up my precious time, their precious time, depending on acuity, and it never is enough. Who am I to say who is more important? Who are the Liberals to say who is more important? And it is terrible to think that the sicker someone is, the more time I need to dedicate to them, meaning the healthier elders rarely see me.
We work extremely hard in our profession and it shows, but how much more can we give with cut-backs lingering in the Liberal agenda? We need to stop thinking in ratios, and start dealing with human beings. I can not wait to see what seniors home waiting list Mr. Campbell ends up on, and see how he feels about the whole matter then.
Even though i don’t consider myself old, the federal government does since they send me a monthly Old Age Pension cheque, so I am very interested in what could very well be my future place of residence when and if I am not able to care for myself. I wonder what exactly the BC government is thinking when they make such drastic cutbacks in health care for their seniors while spending so many millions to host the Olympics.
I would like to hear what excuses our politicians come up with to defend their actions. For me, there are none. This is inexcusable!
Perhaps western society should be learning some lessons from the way Chinese society treats its elders. From the day Chinese young people leave school and start working they are consciously working not just to support themselves, but also their parents. Family is very important in Chinese culture, and they manage to make it a priority even in a society that is now every bit as mobile and complex as ours.
But here in the west families no longer seem to stick together and take care of their own. Parents do not often move in with children later in life. In some circles this neglectful and self-centered attitude goes so far that it is considered elder abuse.
Why don’t we make it a priority, both as families and as communities, to take care of our own? Leaving the job to an uncaring nanny in Victoria is not gonna get anything done right. I think we all know from experience that if you want it done right, do it yourself.
Should your elderly friend or family member be subjected to the intense activity of a hospital setting? Perhaps they have alzheimers, a stroke which may have left them mentally frusterated or need to go to the bathroom but no one answers their call because acute nurses are just too busy. They are too busy caring for the ACUTE care patients. They do not have time to give to the people who now move, talk and eat slowly. These people need to be in LONG TERM care
A friend of mine has just recently been sent off to Fernie to live at the care facility. Being a member of this community for 84 years didn’t matter! She was born here, schooled here,married here, raised her family here, paid her taxes here , buried her husband of 50+ years and her only son here and dearly wanted to die here.She was well prepared for that but that right was taken away from her when she had her last seizure.
No, it is not the fault of the medical staff….Doctors or Housekeepers, it is the fault of our GOVERNMENT!
What will happen when a high ranked Government official has elderly family or friends that have a similar history as my
friend? Do you think that strings would be pulled to prevent this from happening to them?? I bet they quietly would.
The elderly have earned the right and respect to be well cared for,
To those making the constant cuts in all areas of Health Care GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE and start listening to the people of this province!
Congratulations to the caregivers who have had the courage to speak about the state of our senior care. They have expressed something I have been concerned with for several years as a caregiver of a 96 year old. We need to send a strong message to the government that our seniors deserve better. Thanks to Chris and Kaleigh for their comments. I am for the most part happy with the care my friend receives and appreciate the devotion of the staff. I too wonder why we have laundry, sterilization and cooking facilities that must lay unused.
To begin, I want to say that I am very proud of Chris Snyder for speaking out on this issue. My experience over the past four years has been that Interior Health has done all it can to muzzle their employees, so hearing an unvarnished account of what is happening in seniors care from someone who works in the system is very helpful.
I have heard many of the same concerns raised by residents and their families. The standards of care set by this government are not adequate and leave too many residents without the care they require.
In too many cases, seniors care has become a disgrace here in British Columbia. We have found example after example of seniors who are victims of this government’s policies.
The immediate solution that the Opposition has proposed is to create an officer of the Legislature that would be independent of government assigned to look after senior’s issues. The Representative for Seniors would deal with individual complaints as well as system-wide failings. And as an independent advocate, no longer would government have the ability to keep complaints quiet.
Ultimately, seniors care will only improve when the true state of affairs is openly discussed, and we choose a government who puts the needs of seniors first.
As the MLA for this area, it is important that I hear your stories about seniors care. Please feel free to contact my office at 1 (866) 870 4188 or email me at Norm.Macdonald.MLA@leg.bc.ca.
Dear Norm MacDonald,
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but the Opposition’s fix for this sounds a lot like trying to fix the environment with technology – which is the primary cause of the problem in the first place.
And so I think it is with government. If the cause of neglectful treatment of seniors is bad government, then surely more government is not going to fix it.
The suggestion of an ‘independent’ commissioner to mediate seniors’ issues is, to me, rather laughable. This would presumably be modelled like other administrative tribunals (BC Ombudsman, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Human Rights Tribunal).
My experience with all of these agencies has been that they are woefully inadequate. And what’s worse is that they are accountable to no one, because they are independent of the legislature. Even further, their decisions can only be appealed under the Administrative Tribunals Act, and it is fairly rare for such appeals to succeed. And thus the whole idea of fairness gets short-circuited.
And so I think the seniors tribunal idea is a bad one.
In response to kaslogirl’s message, I would have to ask her if she has a better solution to the problem which Norm is addressing.
One of the main reasons that the sixties revolution did not produce any real solutions was that although people were passionate about their desire for change, they didn’t really have any practical solutions and thus, this many years later, a great many, maybe even most of the protesters have become just like those they were objecting to.
Norm has presented one idea to better solve the situation. Perhaps you and/or others have better solutions in mind. I too, wonder just what good a representative For Seniors would be but barring anything better, maybe one idea is better than none at all.
Lynn,
The problem I see is this. If you put a solution in place that is only a solution in name but not in fact, then it will occupy the position where a real solution should go. That means there will no longer be a place for a real solution, and anyone complaining about the lack of an actual working solution will be told that there is already a ’solution’ in place.
This reminds me of the way environmental protection was instituted. The government set up bodies to occupy the spot but they are (in my opinion) quite inadequate and/or serve the wrong interests – but because they are there, occupying the position, they block any opportunity to put something better in place that would do the job properly.
That is why I think an administrative tribunal is a very bad idea if you actually want a workable solution, and not just a political quelling of the riot that might otherwise be.
Do I have a better suggestion? Yes, but it is not a popular one because it would mean people taking personal responsibility and not looking to a nanny government for everything.
If we want the seniors in our community (or anyone else) to be treated right, then charity starts at home. Why on earth do we look to government for things like this that in many cases we could be doing for ourselves, or at least playing a much more active role in?
Granted there are medical considerations with many elders that require specialized expertise, but there are also many other things that are important to make an older person’s life good, and we in our own community are certainly in a much better position to do that – both as families and as a community – than some impersonal government 500 miles away.
There, I told you it would not be a popular solution. Taking personal responsibility rarely is.
In answer to kaslogirl’s statement that if you put a solution in place which is not a good one, then there will not be room for a really good solution, I can see your point; however at this point in time, with many families not willing or not able to take on the responsibility of their aging loved ones, we have a situation which is crying out for something immediate, even if it is not the best answer to the problem. Perhaps down the road fifty or a hundred years from now, the culture of our western world will change and families will once again do as the eastern culture does. But for now I don’t see that happening and, in the meantime, what do we do?
Definitely our ‘nanny’ government must loosen the purse strings since so much that is wrong with our health care system can easily be fixed with more money. I know there are many hungry mouths to feed but I feel that the health and well-being of our human resources has got to be up there on the list, don’t you think?
Lynn,
My second choice then would be to beg and plead and complain to the province, arguing that they should begin a process of handing management of local health care back to the community it serves, while continuing to fund it.
I am not familiar with the school system here in B.C., but in Ontario local areas like counties have school boards, whose trustees are elected from and by the people of the area. Funding comes from the province.
Such a model could certainly be applied to hospital and other health-care services in the valley. A health care board, managed by community-elected trustees, could be established. Funding from Victoria could continue.
At the outset, an evaluation of the needed level of service, and therefore funding, would need to be carried out, and then an initial funding level appropriately set.
I think that would certainly be a step in the right direction. Maybe someone should ask Norm Macdonald, Interior Health, the union, health-care staff, and the local population what they might think about something like this.
In my mind it is clear that decentralization is the obvious short-term answer. There are likely a handful of different ways it could be done.
I can speak to this. Our hospital was run the way kaslogirl is suggesting. We had a local Board of Directors which ran the entire operation. And apparently, it went really well. I’m not sure where the funding came from at that time or when things changed. Interior Health took over around 2002-2004 and that is when all the cut backs began.
It’s also worth mentioning that our long term care facility doubled it’s bed count a couple years ago. However, the number of staff, both front line and in housekeeping did not increase. When there were 15 residents, there were 2 staff on at night. Now there are 35 residents and there are still only 2 staff on at night. What does that say about the level of care those people are receiving?????
It is easy to throw out generalizations about cultures and systems. As Moonglo123 pointed out, we used to have a local board and we tried to keep decisions as local as possible. There have been severe cutbacks ever since the larger health districts were formed, not only in health care institutions but in other areas as well, like service areas for public health inspectors, mental health service and the list goes on. Likewise with school districts. Smaller districts were amalgamated, senior management disappeared and student teacher ratios went up.
kaslogirl keeps holding up eastern culture as a superior model of senior care and the family unit, but if truth be told there is an increasing breakdown of the extended family unit in many countries.
Sometimes, there is not family to adopt the care of the elderly. It is not just a labour of love or duty, it is often a full time, 24/7 job with few rewards. Perhaps there should be more government initiatives to allow benefits for individuals who choose to remain home as caregivers, not just as parents, but as caregivers of our aging population as well.
Sharon — While I do recognize that there are numerous pressures in modern urban corporate society that make it hard to keep families intact and functional, I believe that if we really want things done we cannot look to others to do them for us.
Looking to government to assume our family responsibilities is never going to work. Government doesn’t exist for that purpose and they are not pretending very hard any more to be representing and serving the people. They are there to control things and maintain ‘law and order’, plain and simple.
Yes, it’s true I do respect Chinese culture more than western when it comes to family ethics and practices. I have an adopted Chinese ‘daughter’, and we are building a family business together. Part of its purpose is to support her parents. I also have a daughter in Canada about the same age – but she is more interested in doing things separately and independently, and support is a one-way-street, not mutual. That is western culture for you.
There is something about European culture that seems to encourage people to look elsewhere for things that are inside them.
To Kaslogirl, I want to say this: What about the 80 yr old man who occupies an acute care bed right now. He lived here all his life. He has no children. No family. He’s had a stroke now and can no longer look after himself. Who is there to look after him? Where will he go? It’s fine to say that family ’should’ look after each other. And in a perfect world, I think that’s great. But…hello…we don’t live in a perfect world. There will always be those who have no family. Or those whose family live far away. Or, for whatever reason, can’t rise to the challenge. And it’s not always easy to care for an elderly parent/friend/relative. Sometimes the extremes of dementia demand that a facility and trained caregivers take over. There should be no judgement involved. There should be services available.
moonglo123 – You are right that there are some situations where specialized help is required. If a family cannot handle the situation, or an individual needing help is without family, then I think the responsibility falls to the local community, collectively. And this gets us right back to the problem of BC having somehow wrested control of local facilities from the community, taken them over, and is now doing a lousy job of it — which I think is what makes this story and the issue it raises so important.
I have been caring for aged ,ill and confused parents for 10 years, first in their home, then in my home, with help from home care for a dying father, then senior day care for mother until our home became unsafe for her. Alzheimer’s disease had caused her to wander, lose her ability to communicate and affect her balance. It was a heart wrenching decision, but Mom had to be admitted to Columbia House for 24 hour care and supervision. I have nothing but praise and admiration for the staff. Their work is extremely difficult and it takes a special kind of nurse to work in a senior home care situation. Despite that, they have managed to keep a Buddhist-like atmosphere on the dementia unit. They never show impatience, never argue, never raise their voice. I was shocked to find that 3.4 hrs per resident per day is deemed adequate time to spend with these dear old seniors per day. I have always felt that two staff members on night shift for 34 patients on three separate wings is unsafe. Don’t even think about reducing the staff further. Right now the staff is able to cope. Please don’t jeopardize what is good care and make it into less than adequate. Family and volunteers now are filling in the gap helping with meals, entertainment and buying equipment but cannot be expected to help during evenings and at night. My appreciation, praise, and thanks go to Chris and Kaleigh for having the courage to speak up. The staff is the voice for those who are unable to speak for themselves.
Dear Kaslogirl,
I have read your comments and cannot help but feel a twinge of sympathy for your children, and what is going to be, apparently, expected of them as you age. I hope and pray that you do not have to battle with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, heart attack, etc, and that you can be one of the lucky few that can die peacefully in their home, surrounded by loved ones. (Who wouldn’t?!)
But the reality is, there are no other options for the seniors who are admitted permanently to Columbia House. You speak of the “80 year old who has had a stroke” as a special case….. well each and every one of the residents at Columbia House are special cases, not to mention the waiting list that gets longer daily. Actually, looking at our society and statistics, these people should no longer be considered as special cases, as they are increasingly becoming the norm. We have home care nursing who assess each resident, and family situation, and up until they require 24 hour nursing care and supervision, they have to stay at home with their families, despite lack of “specialized training,” equipment, time, energy, and money, leading to care giver burnout, and sometimes abuse. I often see families so exhausted from having to manually lift their loved one from bed, to chair, to toilet, to chair, to bed (repeat, repeat) on top of all the added jobs that come with taking care of a sick person, that they often find themselves waiting in our crowded emergency room for their own health problems. If you expect the family members (who do not forget, are aging too and are facing their own health challenges) to take on the enormous and overwhelming duty of caregiver, then who do you expect to work outside of the home, for money, to pay for the increasingly expensive lifestyle, because there is no extra time for this. You speak of “strangers” taking care of your loved one, but looking through the eyes of dementia, everyone is a stranger, including you, your family, and friends. Stranger or not, I would want my mother and father to be taken care of by dedicated staff that have had proper training, equipment, time, and energy to do so. I would also know that the doors are always open, and at Columbia House, it is always “visiting hour” if you want it to be.
Unfortunately for the the staff at Columbia House, resident acuity is increasing, and staff levels are remaining the same. Lately, by the time we can officially “accept” the patient as permanent, their health problems have completely take over, and it is only a matter of time (usually a short period of time) that they become palliative.
I strongly applaud the families and friends of these residents who have dedicated some of the best years of their lives to taking care of their own mothers, fathers and loved ones. Changing diapers, feeding them, picking them up off the floor, sitting with them through sleepless nights, over and over and over again, and in certain cases, having to repeat who they are, endlessly, to their own mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. This can never be easy.
And still Kaslogirl, they feel guilty bringing this person into Columbia House, despite all of the time and effort they have made to keep them at home.
I think it is unfair to expect more from our sons, daughters, siblings, and spouse.
It should be the responsibility of the government, who we (and they) have been slaving all our lives for, to pick up the pieces of our broken elders.
Who knows about the increase in salary the Liberals gave themselves? Was it last year? Was is 43%? Please let me know? I’d like to know how they can justifiy that, but cut $ for senior care. What am I missing??????
Hi Kaleigh. I agree that many families are stretching their lives to the limit to take care of family members. But I do not think the solution lies in more government, which I believe is part of the problem.
Rather, I believe the solution lies in restoring the spirit and practice of communtiy, and for our communities to regain the strength and the will to take back responsibility for managing facilities such as Columbia House. We need to get back our community and become more locally self-reliant again.
Why do we find ourselves living in times of a declining life expectancy? Why do we find our elders struggling with so many chronic illnesses that barely existed 50 or more years ago? Why do we allow ourselves to live our entire lives bathing in a sea of pollution, which did not exist 50 years ago?
I think the second thing we need to do is to start learning what is causing shorter life expectancy and more health problems for older people. We need to talk more and learn more about what it takes to remain healthy until the day you leave the planet, as was commonly the case 100 years ago, but rarely now.
We cannot spend all our time mindlessly slaving for money, and spending it on things that are both inessential and health-damaging — and then expect not to get sick. Everyone needs quality sleep, quality diet, quality environment, and time to make those happen. But few are getting that nowadays.
The problem of declining health in the west has been building for a long time and will take just as long to turn around again. But it will never reverse if we don’t act personally to make it so by making better lifestyle choices.
Hey Farmgirl…I think you are right. It was sometime last Spring when the B.C. LIBERAL gov’t announced that they were giving their Ministers a 43% pay increase. That was in the news and then very quickly…out of the news. Hmmmm…thus the need for an independent and unbiased (e.i. unfunded) news media, such as the Columbia Valley News forum. I’m sure the wage increase went thru. We never heard much more about it. I don’t know how much those Ministers made before the increase, but I’m sure it is a lot more than what the average health care worker (or teacher) makes. So, how can they justify that kind of a wage increase for them when they don’t do the same for the average worker? And already the Liberal Gov’t is saying that this is going to be a ‘tough’ year. Tough for whom????? We have people teaching our children, caring for our elders, and they can barely make ends meet. Yet we can afford to pump billions of dollars into the Olympic Games and give our Ministers
an ‘unearned’ wage increase while making Gordon Campell seem like a hero!!! So, what is wrong with this picture???? Where are our priorties??? What really matters to us? Our children? Our Elders? Or the overpaid Ministers of the Gov’t?????? People need to speak up and say that ‘enough is enough’. We need to get back to what is really inportant….what really matters. And it’s our youngest and our oldest…..they count for something. And we need to speak up for them.
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Just a clarification on the hours of direct patient care in B.C. In a Freedom of Information request, the Hospital Employees’ Union found that in 2008, the average worked hours of direct nursing and personal care per resident provided in facilities in the Fraser Health Authority, for example, was only 2.7 hours per day. Similarly, a recent survey by the BC Care Providers found that BC facilities provide an average of 2.6 hours per resident per day, varying between 2.1 to 3.2 hours. Despite the increasing care needs of residents, the actual hours of care in BC facilities haven’t improved since 2001 when researchers found that BC staffing levels in residential care facilities ranged from 2.3 hours to 3.4 hours. Clearly, most facilities in B.C. don’t have the staffing levels required to provide quality care to their residents. The BC Care Providers have appealed to government for more funding for facilities. In a news release they said this: “By refusing to pay the real costs of delivering increasingly complex care services to our seniors in need, government and health authorities are forcing long term care providers to lower their quality of care by reducing services and staffing to unacceptable levels.
I WORK IN A HOSPITAL FOR 21 YRS . AS A HOUSEKEEPER . WE HAD 15% TAKEN OFF OUR WAGES AND OUR AREA’S DOUBLED UP MEANING WE HAVE TWICE THE WORK AND LESS WAGES TO TAKE HOME . I HAVE WATCHED THE DETERIATION OF PATIENT CARE AND HOSPITAL CLEANLINESS DETERIATE ON GORDEN CAMPBELLS WATCH BUT ALSO THESE ‘AUTHORITY’ HEALTH BOARDS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN THE USA WALL STEET BOYS . WHEN ADMINISTATIVE COSTS ARE HIGHER THAN PATIENT CARE SOMEONE IS LINING THERE OWN POCKETS , AK GORDEN CAMPBELL AND THE FAT PAID HEALTH BOARDS .SENIORS ARE SUFFERING BUT HEALTH CARE AS A WHOLE HAS GONE TO HELL AND NO ONE SEEMS TO GET IT. WHEN ARE PEOPLE FINALLY GOING TO SAY ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH AND GET OUT THERE AND RALLY THIS COUNTRY’S SAFETY FROM THESE PEOPLE. GREED AND ARROGENT ATTITUDES ARE CAUSING OUR COUNTRY TO GO FROM 1ST. IN THE WORLD TO 28TH . COME ON PEOPLE OFF THE COUCH AND START A MARCH IN YOUR AREA BEFORE MAY 12 . PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS ARE CREEPING UP .PLEASE GET OUT THERE AND SAVE OUR PROVINCE FEOM THESE CONDESENDING PEOPLE WHO CALL THEM SELVES OUR GOVERNMENT.
Thanks, Frances for the clarification. I too, just read some numbers like that and was going to post a comment. You beat me to it
Very distressing, isn’t it?????
I to am a caregiver in an elderdly home. I am upset we are only given 2.7 hrs per day per resident when you have to do all there ADLs. How do you fit dressing, tolieting, feeding, bathing, brushng teeth, combing hair, changing depends, taking them for walks, laying them down for naps, putting creams on or treatments that are needed now how does one care staff fit this in for nine to twelve residents in each wing, pod or neighbour hood. They feel they can roll our wages back and not give enough care staff to give the proper care that our elderly need and deserve to live a quality life. That is shameful and our groverment needs to take responsibilty for their actions.