The Way We Treat Our Elderly People
My grandmother’s condition is getting worse and worse for quite a long while already. That is why she was moved into what we call a verzorgingshuis – I do not know the correct English word for it, it literally means ‘taking care off home’ – last Wednesday morning.
She has to stay there for a while, before they will move her into a verplegingshuis (nursinghome).
The Dutch government has refused to invest in homes like it. For a while now stories were getting out that some of the elderly do not get washed, do not get enough to drink / to eat, &c.
This is the first time that I witnessed the treatment first hand. It is absolutely appalling. I am disgusted by the way we, the Dutch, treat those who made this nation as rich as it is today. Everything we have, is because of their sacrifices.
The Dutch government, my government, does not seem to agree. Every year, less and less money is spent on the elderly. The result is that before mentioned homes have to let people go. Less staff, less time to actually take care off the people they are paid to take care off.
Not only do I blame my government for this, the ones who do have jobs in this ‘sector’, or area, are getting paid by taxpayers euros. The lazy bastards, however, do not seem to be willing to do a little bit more than minimally required of them. Yes, they do what their job description is, but when they have to do one small step more, they simply don’t.
My grandmother does not realize it any longer when she has to go to the bathroom, so to speak. She just ‘lets it go’. This, logically, means that people need to clean it up for her. Yesterday 4.30PM, she shit her pants (I am choosing these words deliberately since this is the cold hard reality and I do not see why I should make it sound any less cold, horrible and denigrating). When my parents came to visit her at 6.45PM they still had not cleaned the mess up. She was literally lying in her own shit for over 2 hours.
My parents and my moms sisters also noticed that, for two days in a row now, her dinner is standing on a table besides my grandmothers bed: cold and untouched. Someone has to feed her: she is shaking too much herself. Again, the ones who are payed to take care of her, consider themselves to be unable to do so. They just let her lay there. She is suffering from dehydration symptoms now, because she is also unable to drink without somebody helping her.
When my mother or one of my aunts confronts the ‘nurses’ (and I am using this term extremely loosely) they simply say that they cannot help it, that they do not have enough colleagues helping them out.
Although there is some truth in that, these ‘nurses’ should, perhaps, take their own responsibilities. They get payed by taxpayers euros. They get payed to take care of elderly people, who cannot take care of themselves. If this means working one hour extra per day, they should freaking do it. Instead of only complaining about what the government does and does not do, perhaps they could walk the extra mile themselves, while at the same time trying to convince the government (by influencing public opinion for instance) that it should invest more money in (health) care.
If they are unwilling to do so, they should go home, take care of the household, stop taking taxpayers euros and stop acting as if they are willing to do what it takes to take care of those, who cannot take care of themselves.
The real hypocritical part is that these ‘nurses’ admit that they cannot take care of her, that they know it, but that they agree to take her in nonetheless. Why? Because the government gives the ‘home’ money for every room that has a patient in it.
This is the sad truth of how we deal with our elderly people today.
I am disgusted.
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19 Responses to “The Way We Treat Our Elderly People”
Just makes you long for government heath care, don’t it.
So why don’t YOU take care of your grandmother?
Well, that qualifies as the single most stupid comment of the year at TMV.
Lets see: because I am not qualified, because she demands 24/7 care, because I cannot give that to her because I have to, you know, study, my parents cannot provide it for her because they have to go to work and are not qualified either, if they hire someone to take care of her 24/7 they will be broke, if one of them quits his / her job, not enough money to pay for everything we have and he / she remains unqualified, let alone to pay for taking my grandmother in, because taxpayers pay a lot of money each year so people can be educated as to be able to take care of people like my grandmother, because we pay taxes to pay for the salaries of the people who are supposed to take care of my grandmother, because… Should I continue, or do you get the point?
Michael, it’s the same here in Spain too. My grandfather spent the last years of his life in a “home”. Some are better than others. Look around, maybe you can find a better one. In my experience, the smaller they are, the better.
Gattsuru believe it or not, lots of people don’t have the money to pay for private medical care. Public health care gives everyone mediocre care. Fully private health care provides decent healthcare for some, and none at all for others. If you’re on the right side of the fence it’s just dandy, but if you’re on the wrong side… In any case, all european contries DO have private health care, for those that can afford it, and public for everyone else. Oh and don’t think that just because you’re paying a load of money to a place that they’re going to take good care of your parents/grandparents, especially if they have neurological issues like Alzheimers. There are countless examples of private nursing homes neglecting and misstreating their patients, drugging them when they complain or telling families that they’re making it all up because of they’re senile.
SLJDDS there is this thing called a “job”. Most adults have these “jobs” that considerably reduce another thing, called “free time”. Very old and sick people need constant, 24-hour care. Many of them need to have a doctor nearby just in case. In the old days, women didn’t work outside the home and to them fell the care of the elderly. Now two paychecks are needed just to survive, so for most of your day you simply cannot be taking care of an elderly person, because without a job you have no house to shelter them, nor food to feed them, nor money for their medicines.
Michael, I am sorry. I have some older relatives who are heading in this direction. The vision of them lying in their own shit because there is no one to take care of them is terrible and chilling.
Why is funding for the elderly being cut there? What is the money going to instead?
Michael- My sympathy for your grandma-no one should live like that.
In this country, government programs to house the elderly are considered socialism-which is why the first two responses to your post were so nasty! Free markets and capitalism now mean that you don’t have to care what happens to anyone but yourself and your family-great system!
BYG: a lot of course, gets lost somewhere in the bureaucratic machinery.
Secondly, they are for years already cutting all kinds of expenses because our economy was overloaded due to our welfare state.
I agree with my government on many things -> I also believe we must reduce our welfare state, but the problem is, that one should not target the helpless, like elderly people who quite simply cannot help themselves, first.
The ‘help people help themselves’ approach does not really work when someone does not remember one’s own childrens’ names (this is, by the way, not the case with my grandmother – she remembers all that kind of stuff, but she is… locked up mentally. Cannot describe that any better. She notices things… she knows things… but… it is as if she’s not here. If you ever saw that with a person, you will know exactly what I mean), or does not know when one is taking a sh*t, &c, now does it?
Exactly. I was almost going to add something like “now invision that the lady I am describing is not my grandmother, but your (grand)mother”.
Lynx:
Yes you are right about that.
Costs of private nursing homes: you raised some good points. Very true. Let me add that one should also not forget that in a system in which ‘public homes’ are the kind of homes the government wants to support / encourage, private homes do not just cost ‘a bit’ more. But a lot. Public homes receives all kinds of ‘extras’. Private ones do not.
Yes, as I said in my post, she is awaiting transportation to another home. That will take several weeks though, because of the bureaucracy. In the meantime, she is lying in her own crap and becoming extremely depressed.
One of the other things I did not choose to mention in the actual post, is that my grandmother has always been a very positive kind of person. She has now become extremely depressed. Just in a matter of days.
One of the reasons for this is that she did not want to go to this home: she had been there a couple of days before (strictly to ‘recover’ as to be able to back home) and she had the same trouble: she was less bad then and she ringed the nurses that she had to go to the bathroom. After 30 minutes she could not control herself any longer and let it all run… (sorry for the specifics, but again, this is the brutal reality and I do not see why we should do our best to make it all sound less bad)
This did not happen once, but a couple of times.
Anyway, due to our system, they explained to me that she has to go to this home first, be there for a while and after seeing how that goes, they decide whether or not she should go to the other, better nursing home.
The sad reality is, that a lot of these homes are as the I described in the post.
What the heck is wrong with our society that we must work real hard at getting our parents and grandparents in a particular good nursing home, because the other homes are crap?
O I forgot to add, my neighbor is a manager in the hospital of Leeuwarden. He told my mother that the government is cutting their funding as well which will mean that, next year, they will not be able to feed (some of) the people that need to be fed because they are unable to feed themselves.
MvgD,
Before I went away to college I worked in a nursing home here in the US. No matter where you are US or Holland, your personal responsibility is to visit your grandmother to comfort her and to observe the quality of her care by the care providers. By doing these two things you will guarentee that your relative will be getting the best care possible. A sad fact is that many people ‘dump’ their responsibilties to the elderly onto a nursing home and then ignore and don’t visit their relative.
Don’t worry. We are looking after her. That way, she will only have to sit in her own shit for a couple of days / weeks.
Which still is absolutely unacceptable.
Also: what about the elderly who do not have anyone else?
Michael, the system here in the US is shocking. Since the quality of many municipal nursing homes is abysmal… That leaves private facilities. You know what a private nursing home costs in the NYC metro area now? Between $300 and $400 a day for a semi-private room. The average daily rate in the rest of the country is about $250. I saw my grandparents’ savings run dry before medicare kicked in. Financial planning/long term care insurance is key to avoid that happening, and if you can’t afford it… too bad.
“So why don’t YOU take care of your grandmother?”
Nice comment from the compassionate conservative crowd. As much as your government is a social engeneering nitemare there Michael (and I agree about the welfare state comment you made) the elderly that made any country what it is don’t deserve to be thrown away after use like a tissue. This country’s me, me, me attitude has caused the very same thing, and it’s comments like the one that irked you that makes me hope karma visit’s those that feel that way….soon.
As you pointed out above, your country (and mine) often seem to get the welfare state balance flat backwards. The most important part is a strong safety net for those who truly need it (like your Grandmother). Other than that, the government only hurts its citizens and its own revenue by requiring other things.
You stated that the nurses should just work the extra hour to make sure that things get done. Are they even legally allowed to do so? In my country, the employee is legally required to pay 150% of the normal hourly-wage past 40 hours/week. If your country has a similar law (and I assume that it does being Dutch), the home probably can’t afford this.
Michael, Not that I agree w/ the comment from SLJDDS, but your thinking of not having the skills to take care of your grandmother are incorrect. The only time she would likely need a true “nurse” is to push drugs. You may disagree w/ me, but let me give you a personal example.
My dad, he was diagnosed w/ Stomach Cancer, had the tumor removed, only to relapse 8 months later. He began Chemo, and unfortunately never got better. My mom took care of him 99% of the time. He was at home and she did everything from connecting an IV to a “stent”, hooking up his feeding tube the same way, cleaning him, literally everything. So, it can be done, but the commitment is tough for sure. He finally had to go into hospice where he passed away. Its a commitment to taking care of our parents/grandparents that isn’t often made. I of course don’t know your situation w/ school or your parents situation w/ work. What it comes down to is, is someone in the family willing to put their life on hold for someone elses, and not get paid for it?
The only other thing I could recommend, is to go get one of those jobs and walk a mile in their shoes (the nurses that is) to fully understand what they deal w/ on a day to day basis. There are certainly those that are worthless, but you might find some that are not. My wife is a true Nurse here in the US, I see what she goes through day to day, some days are great some are miserable.
I don’t know the answer, I just know from personal experience it can be done. As others have said, nursing homes here in the US are no better many times, unless you have the means to pay for a nicer private one.
I hope for your grandmother’s and your family’s sake the situation improves sooner rather than later.
In the US nurses do not take care of feeding and cleaning up when a patient soils/shits themselves. That is the job of a nurses aide. This is typically a minimum wage job with zero education or training requirements.
Jim B. You have a good point. I did not try to act as if all nurses are like that. In fact, there are good and even great nurses.
The problem is that those kind of nurses seem to be the exeption on the general rule, or perhaps better said, that there are also quite a lot who are not good, let alone great.
An example of my personal experience: I had to undergo surgery last June 1st. It did not go as planned and I had to stay ‘flat’ in my bed for almost a week. This meant that I was allowed to get out of bed, not even to go to the bathroom. As you might understand, this meant that I had to, umh, do it lying down with a don’t know English word, put below my youknowwhat.
After that nurses had to come in and ‘clean me up’.
Some were great. Truly great. I found it to be the most humiliating thing in my life, but they were very friendly and considering.
Than, there were a couple of younger nurses. They complained when they had to help me (while doing so was their freaking job. They get paid to do so). Worse still, one night at I believe 11PM, the nurses were gathered in the hallway path (is that a word? lol) and were talking with eachother about the day. They expected everyone to be asleep of course. I wasn’t.
They also talked about me not being able to go to the bathroom. How disgusting that part of their job was and they laughing at me because I apologized for needing their assistance. One might think, they laughed because apologizing was not necessary, since it was their job to help me out, as in a friendly laugh, but it was nothing of that kind.
Instead of a ‘friendly laugh’, they said that I should just not have ‘to go’ at all, how disgusting it all was, &c.
That, Jim, is just my personal experience.
(yes I filed a complaint and she was not allowed to take care of me anymore)
Jim, furthermore: I am a college student so it is quite impossible for me taking in my grandmother. I responded to something like that at the beginning of this comment thread. My parents and my mothers sisters all, strangely, have to work. They cannot just stop working, as you might understand, for financial reasons. If she, for instance, would have only 1 month to live, it might be another thing. Just take that time off. However, she could also continue to live for another year or 1.5 or even 2 years: as should be obvious that is much too long.
Also: if my government is not able to take care of the elderly in a decent manner, it should not force people to pay for it nonetheless. I jokingly told my mother that she should just stop paying taxes for a while
Chris Bell: I do not know the exact CAO (something like a general contract for all people working in a particular field of work) of those nurses. The general rule is, if I remember correctly, that people can work overtime (without being paid a ridiculous amount extra), for normal salary, but it has to be limited. 1 hour per day would cross that line. That being said, I meant it, of course, figurally. Some days they will be able to go home, other days work 20 minutes extra and again other days a little bit more. I was more trying to make a point.
“Walking in their shoes”: I understand your sentiment, but it isn’t really an argument. I could just as well say that those nurses should walk in my father’s shoes, or in my grandmathers shoes (as to be able to ‘feel’ how terribly they are treated).
That being said: before mentioned neighbor told us that he will need volunteers next year to help out due to the cuts in the funding he receives.
I believe that it would be a good thing for me to help him out with that. After all, what good are nice words without accompanying actions?
Pyst:
Exactly and it tells me more than I want to know about the state of my country.
Benfong:
Yep, only for the rich (at least before medicare kicked in of course).
Also, some extra explanation: I am not advocating my government to become bigger. I am demanding of her to adequately carry out the tasks she took upon herself.
Sorry for the long comment, hope I answered some of your questions satisfactory.
MvdG,
I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother too. I don’t have any great suggestions, and I agree with several commenters that the situation for the elderly in the US is as bad or worse. A lot of that reflects very poorly on the way our generation is treating it’s elders and the amount of time and resources we commit to their care.
A subtheme of your post, though, also struck me. That is, that governments really shouldn’t be counted on to provide these services because:
1) They don’t care about the quality of services provided
2) Govt is always inefficient in providing services of any kind, thus the same amount of funds could be used with better effect in the private sector.
3) When the govt is charged with provision of these services, and fails to adequately provide, then individuals are in a worst case situation because they have already paid a lot in taxes for services they are not getting, so they have less of their own funds to pay for the services privately. A slightly less tragic, but still significant situation where this occurs in the US is in the public school system. Without a voucher system, taxpayers are forced to use public education system even when it is woefullly inadequate, because they are required to pay for the lousy schools and thus can’t afford to put their kids in better private ones.
CStanley said :
A subtheme of your post, though, also struck me. That is, that governments really shouldn’t be counted on to provide these services because
I agree completely. People should set aside money for themselves and their loved ones rather than depend on the government. But when you live in a welfare state two things happen. First you have less money to set aside for such cases. second people become dependent and consider it not to be their responsibility. When you depend on the government you will spend more money and get back less.
People always bring up the case of the elderly person with no relatives or the person who doesn’t save or purchase insurance. I contend that they constitute far fewer people than the majority who would act properly. Regardless I say each person should have the damn freedom to deiced for themselves how they want to plan for old age.
Please don’t bother listing all the examples of how expensive care can be. My family has had more than their fair share in this regard. We have spent hundreds of thousands beyond what the insurance companies would pay for additional comfort for our loved ones.
A friend has a father who has lingered from the debilitating effects of spinal meningitis. They have far exceeded the limit on their insurance and spend hundreds of thousands each year to make this man as comfortable as humanly possible. The cost for them is staggering. But they value this man’s life and dignity. They also see it as their responsibility and not that of their neighbors.
It is up to us to take care of our parents just like they took care of their parents. Because of the rat race we tend to forget about our parents and all the good things they’ve done for us. If you love your parents you will either take care of them or purchase a Long Term Care policy for them. Nobody deserves to lay in their own urine for 8 hours because they’re on medicade and in a nursing home. These are your parents that brought you into this world and raised you. It is YOUR responisbility. Not your town, city, state or nation. IT IS YOURS.
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