Many patients remain in the nursing home setting for the balance of their lives. Their final years can either be comfortable or tragic depending on the quality of care they receive.
It is difficult for an individual family to influence the nursing home’s management to improve patient care.
The best opportunity for success in improving patient care is through the nursing home’s Family Council.
Members of the council are the families of the residents. They can set their own agendas and present the facility with their concerns which must be addressed by management.
There are care issues that are common in nursing homes. The following is an outline of several of them and how they can affect nursing home patients’ quality of life.
1. Nutrition. When there is a shortage of staff in the facility, patients who are unable to feed themselves independently, suffer.
2. Hydration. A lack of adequate fluid intake is a cause of significant problems for residents including confusion, falls, and urinary tract infections.
Residents must have water conveniently located in their room. The water container must be regularly filled. Patients must be encouraged to drink water throughout the day.
Once again, inadequate staffing is usually the underlying problem when patients are dehydrated.
3. Assistance with Activities of Daily Living. Another area of concern is the insufficient number of nursing assistants to provide patients with assistance in their activities of daily living.
These activities include: bathing, dressing, grooming, transfers to bed and chair, ambulation, toileting, and eating (as discussed above).
The Family Council through its family members can provide factual accounts of care concerns at the facility and request that the facility provide adequate staff to attend to their vulnerable patients.
If cooperation isn’t forthcoming, the Council should then request the Arizona Department of Health Services to investigate the inadequacy in the facility’s level of care.
