¶ … Care for a Family Member
When a family is searching for the best possible healthcare environment for an older person in the family, that family really has three choices. They can place the elderly person in a nursing home, or have a home care agency come into the home and provide services, or the family can turn to a long-term care solution. This paper reviews the positives, negatives, and other aspects of all three solutions. Using peer-reviewed sources, this paper looks at specific areas of interest in the three potential solutions for a family.
Nursing Homes - Suicide
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, more than 40% of Americans will need some care in a nursing facility (which is also seen as a "long-term" service) in their lifetime (Mullin, 2013). Moreover, the cost for a private room (on average in the United States) in a nursing home runs around $248 a day; a semi-private room averages$222 a day or around $81,000 annually (Mullin, p. 1). About 100 days is apparently all that Medicare will pay, so to begin a look at nursing home situations means checking out the finances.
Meanwhile, how safe are nursing homes when it comes to protecting an elderly family member? The issue that is presented in the American Journal of Public Health is suicide; this is pertinent because the rate of suicide among males age 65 or older is 30 suicides per 100,000 (Mezuk, et al., 2015). That is a fairly high rate compared with males under the age of 25 (7 per 100.000). The issue of suicide is raised in this piece because the typical risk factors for suicide are "social isolation, depression, and functional impairment," and these factors can often be found in nursing home patients (Mezuk, 1495).
It helps that the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act mandates screening of all long-term care patients vis-a-vis psychiatric services, but there is no evidence that all nursing home patients have frequent screening to determine their mental and emotional health. While there are always the unknowns vis-a-vis patients, and some can fall through the cracks of any facility, there is concern in this regard because suicidal ideation (thinking about or contemplating killing one's self) is "common among long-term care patients" and between 5% and 33% of nursing home residents report having had suicidal ideation (Mezuk, 1495).
Other factors that may come into play when older people are going through even temporary or rare suicidal ideation include: a) there are nursing homes that house residents with "psychiatric disorders" -- which can be troubling for a new patient; b) facility characteristics can negatively impact patients, like the size of beds and the number of beds (a sense of being crowded or a lack of privacy contributes to this issue); c) some nursing homes go through high turnover in staff, which has been associated " ... with higher risk of suicidal behavior among residents"; and d) the simple fact of having an elderly person go from living with a family to having to transition into a nursing home " ... is a risk for suicide" (Mezuk, 1495).
Also, when an older man or woman is admitted into a nursing home, there is always a kind of " ... complex interplay of social and psychological factors," which can include a loss of social connectedness, autonomy, and personal identity, Mezuk explains. These transitional periods in the life of an older person can produce feelings of " ... anxiety, loneliness, and hopelessness" because going from being at home with family to suddenly sharing a facility with many people with many different issues can clearly be psychologically challenging (Mezuk, 1495).
The authors conducted research by gathering data from the "Virginia Violent Death Reporting System (2003-2011)," and they matched locations of suicides (3,453) against the available information about nursing homes (285) and assisted living facilities (548). What they came up with was a suicide rate of 14.16 per 100,000 in nursing homes and 15.66 per 100,000 in the community (Mezuk, 1500). In any event, it is clear that research needs to be conducted regarding nursing homes and the mental and emotional health of elderly residents.
Nursing Homes -- Quality of Care
In the Scandinavian Journal of Caring Science the authors conducted a study to determine the relationship between the work culture in a nursing home and the quality of care in a nursing home. In order to research this issue, they looked into databases for any articles that described the relationship between a particular work culture and the quality of care. They got 14,510 hits but 10,401 were "duplicates"; and of the rest of the articles (4,109) just 10 specifically focused on the specific aim...
Long-Term Care Sustainability as a Major Issue Affecting Canadian Healthcare System The Canadian Health Act (CHA) provides that provincial governments should cover the entire cost of hospital and physician services. There are however two components that the CHA doesn't require provincial governments to pay for including two other components of healthcare; drug costs and non-acute care provided in nursing homes and other kinds of long-term care facilities. Thus, it is up
Figure 1 portrays the state of Maryland, the location for the focus of this DRP. Figure 1: Map of Maryland, the State (Google Maps, 2009) 1.3 Study Structure Organization of the Study The following five chapters constitute the body of Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: Review of the Literature Chapter III: Methods and Results Chapter IV: Chapter V: Conclusions, Recommendations, and Implications Chapter I: Introduction During Chapter I, the researcher presents this study's focus, as it relates to the
Health care [...] long-term care, and its' affect on the health care industry today, and in the future. Long-term care is becoming much more prevalent in our society because people are living longer, and as the Baby Boom generation ages, there will be even more elderly and infirm that will need this special type of health care. What is long-term care? "Long-term care has been described as 'a set of
It is critical that NHAs are first qualified nurses, as their ability to relate to other nurses is essential to the organizational success of the nursing home ("Nursing home administrator jobs," 2011). Career paths for an NHA are rooted with education background and nursing experience. Although experience is necessary for being a successful NHA, a career path at minimum requires clinical licensing (Decker, & Castle, 2009). The NHA is the
In respects, it could also reduce lawsuit expense when patients want to sue because of the wrong medication is given or harm is done in the process of medication administration. "We often resist the new way of doing things..." (Thede, 2009, Sept). Behaviors are often aimed at relieving the pressures from change rather than advancing a new approach to the way we do things. We tend to view change as
Long-Term Care on the Family Social Factors Affecting Care Giving Effects of Divorce Effects of Abuse and Neglect Effects of Women in the Workforce Proximity and Other Factors The Long-term Care Shortage Factor Involved Future Trends Formal Long-term Care: The Impact on Society Minority Issues Financial Impact on Family Social Workers and Home Caregivers The Effects on the Caregiver Physical and Emotional Symptoms Five Major Causes of Stress Among Home Caregivers Wearing Many Hats The Impact and Cost of Long-term Care on the Family Long-term care can
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