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    Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly
    Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly
    Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly
    Ebook107 pages4 hours

    Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly

    By Donna Sprague

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    About this ebook

    Your Granny's Nurse: Caring for the Elderly with Compassion is your guide to caring for your aging loved one at home, and assist in the choosing of a care facility when it becomes a necessity. This book will gently walk you through the process of home care, nursing home admission, hospice care, and how to make your loved one's later years a positive experience. Interspersed with uplifting tales of true life in the nursing home, this book will ease your mind when it becomes necessary to admit someone into a home. You will laugh, you may cry and you will learn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDonna Sprague
    Release dateJan 4, 2015
    ISBN9781310873041
    Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly
    Author

    Donna Sprague

    Donna Sprague is a retired Geriatric Nurse, who, in the course of her 35 year career has compiled a myriad of knowledge of the Nursing Home/Rehabilitation Center from the inside of the industry. She has held the hands of the dying, argued for Compassionate Care of the Elderly on a wide stage, and has a genuine love for the old folks. She has been a champion of the elderly and the nursing assistant, the backbone of the nursing home industry. She has fought for the rights of both staff and the vulnerable people they care for. Here, she shares her experiences, and her knowledge to help you help your loved one ease into their Autumn years with grace. She is Your Granny's Nurse.

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      Book preview

      Your Granny's Nurse - Donna Sprague

      Your Granny's Nurse: Your Guide to Aging and Compassionate Care for the Elderly

      By Donna Sprague

      Copyright 2015 Donna Sprague

      Smashwords Edition

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 - Care for the Caregiver

      Chapter 2 - Is That a Banana in Your Pocket?

      Chapter 3 - Who Will Pay The Bills?

      Chapter 4 - Choosing a Care Facility

      Chapter 5 - For-Profits versus Non-Profits

      Chapter 6 - Granny Has Rights, the Same as You

      Chapter 7 - Look Closer, See ME

      Chapter 8 - Memory Loss, or How to Keep Granny Herself Longer

      Chapter 9 - Alzheimer's Disease and Other Forms of Dementia

      Chapter 10 - Frank and Emma

      Chapter 11 - Depression in the Elderly; More Common Than You Know

      Chapter 12 - Natural Remedies and Foods to Help Granny's Health

      Chapter 13 - Constipation, the Scourge of the Elderly

      Chapter 14 - Holidays in the Home: Giving Gifts Granny Can Use

      Chapter 15 - Twas The Night Before...

      Chapter 16 - It's All About Camaraderie

      Chapter 17 - Using Humor to Diffuse a Bad Situation

      Chapter 18 - Can You Decipher Granny's Chart?

      Chapter 19 - Tillie

      Chapter 20 - Instilling Care in the Nursing Home Caregiver

      Chapter 21 - Who Gets to Say When?

      Chapter 22 - Code Status: To Treat or Not to Treat

      Chapter 23 - Hospice

      Chapter 24 - It's All About Perspective

      Chapter 25 - If Wishes were Horses, The Aged Would Fly

      Chapter 26 - The F Word

      Author's Biography

      Introduction

      This book was compiled to help caregivers, loved ones, and friends of the elderly get a handle of how to proceed as their loved one or themselves get older. Inside, you will find humor, sadness, joy, and guidance to assist you in your path of care giving and decision making in determining the path your loved one will pursue.

      In my decades as a geriatric nurse, I have seen exemplary care, and care I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I have observed nursing home staff who came in to work at 2:00 AM on Thanksgiving morning, knowing their shift starts at 5:00, to ensure your Granny has a spectacular,completely home made meal for dinner. That, my friends, is dedication. If you don't believe that, you try making turkey, dressing, all the sides, including pies, for 150, and have it ready by noon.

      I have seen bedsores the size of a hubcap, and deep enough to fit a fist inside. I have sat at the bedside of uncountable dying elders, holding their hands and gently telling them it is okay to move on to the next phase. I have encouraged old people to just hang on a little while longer to give their loved ones time to arrive to say their goodbyes. I have used the term Damn it, Breathe! more than a few times. I know the difference between quality of care and quantity of care.

      Thank you for reading the meanderings of a lifelong geriatric nurse. With the trends in long-term care moving away from The nursing home' and into the rehab center, I feel they are losing their philosophy of care. While the rehab aspect is financially prudent, and as a nurse, I can attest to that. However, it is the home" aspect that gets them repeat business, and a caring reputation in the community. I believe that as an industry, nursing homes are too focused on the bottom line to pay enough attention to those who were entrusted to them. It is all about the benjamins in corporate sponsored homes. It is the long term residents, who make their facilities their home. I believe that if they focus more attention on the long term residents in the facilities, they will not only benefit financially, in repeat business, but in reputation. They will have less staff turnover, as only those with a true knack for caring will be employed by them. They need to get back to their original focus: The compassionate care of the elderly.

      Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it

      Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French or Late Latin; Anglo-French, from Late Latin compassion-, compassion, from compati to sympathize, from Latin com- + pati to bear, suffer

      Compassion is what we need to feel when we consider our elderly, whether at home, or in a long term care facility. Each of them has a story to tell, of a life lived, loves lost, whether they can enunciate it or not.

      Regardless of the malady that brings them to the nursing home's doors, they all are individuals with expansive histories that shape the residents they have become.

      There is caring, and there is CARING

      When we admit someone into our facilities, they need to know we have caring hearts. Faith based homes, such as those run by religious orders, or church sponsorships, are viewed as caring by association, with the built-in assumption of love and support due to their affiliation with a church.

      What about the rest of them ? In my research, I reviewed the mission statements and philosophies of care of over 100 homes. Of those, several included a statement to the effect of and to earn a fair and reasonable profit for our shareholders or To provide these services in a cost effective, financially responsible manner.

      I don't know about you but if I were researching nursing homes for my ailing Granny, I would definitely pick one whose mission does not include the word profit.

      Researchers, including Bradford Gray of the nonprofit Urban Institute, analyzed some 162 studies of nonprofit versus for-profit health care providers. They found that ownership status makes a difference in outcomes and in the cost of health care provided.

      While the majority of studies found that the quality of care in nursing homes was better at nonprofits, most studies showed that for-profit nursing homes had an edge on the nonprofits in the area of cost control. The study appears in the July/August 2006 issue of the Journal Health Affairs."

      What can privately owned facilities do to improve their reputation as caring facilities?

      Give a damn. That's what. While they are aware that profit is the bottom line, they must never, ever, let our clients know that. What they need is to show them is that you care. Just how will they do that? By having a staff that appreciates that there is a person behind the diagnosis. You can have the most beautiful facilities in the country, but their rooms will remain empty unless they address the people they serve. Yes, serve. That is what we do, isn't it?

      The elderly in this state, and I and speaking exclusively of Ohio, generally do not want Mediterranean encrusted salmon with roasted baby asparagus for dinner every night. They want soup beans and cornbread, foods they recognize. They do not care one whit if your lobby is furnished in Louis XIV, if they are not permitted to sit on it. Remember, they have to live there.

      With all the turnover of resident seen in long term care, just how

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