Mom wearing her Five Fires Equestrian Centre hat, 2022
There are significant gaps in providing protective services to seniors in long term care. I'll continue to document these in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are some ideas for helping to protect your loved one in long term care:
1. The lawyer advising me indicates that you can likely install a live feed camera in the resident's nursing home room. The resident or their substitute decision maker will need to consent. You will also need to ensure that you haven't signed a contract with the facility that prevents you from having a live feed camera.
If there are multiple people living in one room consent from all would be required.
Obviously there are privacy issues to weigh along with the safety and protection of the resident. Knowing what I know now, I would always go with having a camera.
2. Enquire whether the nursing home has a whistle blower process that enables staff and any other concerned people to make a complaint anonymously. For example Shoreham Village has a very good whistle blower process in place.
3. If the resident is at risk of falling, ensure their bed has a sensor to alert staff if they are trying to get up unassisted. Mom had one on her bed at Colchester hospital but not at Shannex's Cedarstone Enhanced Care facility in Truro. In addition to her terrible abuse incident outlined in earlier posts, she fell and hit her head her first week at Cedarstone.
Please ensure that you check any legal questions with a lawyer who can address your specific case.
If you have other ideas for resident safety or if you have experience with abuse in a nursing home setting, please email me at carol@fivefires.ca, with the subject line Abuse.
Thank you for reading.
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