Caring on Stolen Time: A Nursing Home Diary

[maenads_dance]

I work in a place of death. People come here to die, and my co-workers and I care for them as they make their journeys. Sometimes these transitions take years or months. Other times, they take weeks or some short days. I count the time in shifts, in scheduled state visits, in the sham monthly meetings I never attend, in the announcements of the “

Comments

[gloraelin]

This is horrifying. I had no idea conditions were that bad... the only thing I've ever really seen that pertains to conditions in nursing homes was elder abuse by the staff. Now, though, I'm wondering how much of that was an unwanted side effect of things like this author experienced. Either way, holy shit.

Regarding the "don't unionize or kiss your job goodbye" thing, I thought that was illegal? I don't know much about the process of unionizing but I do know that unionbusting was forbidden... anyone have any info on that?

[halfshellvenus]

Worse yet, the workers were NOT attempting to unionize. They just wanted to have a reasonable discussion to make the administration understand why the change would be so bad!

Take "not listening" and add "but this must be said," and suddenly you have unionizing?

Clearly, the CNAs overestimated the human decency of the administrators. And that's sadder still.

[redstar826]

It technically is illegal, yes, but the process for complaining is time consuming and employers will just use bullshit excuses that are hard to verify ("I didn't fire them for unionizing! I fired them for violating some obscure rule in the employee handbook, etc"). And most low wage workers can't afford to lose their jobs.

[halfshellvenus]

Long, but I read it through to the end.

Instead of people of color in uniformed scrubs, white women with pretty clothes are paid more to care for the leisure-time activities of the old white people.
This was appalling, but entirely believable.

One of the most frustrating aspects of business and government these days is that cost-cutting generally happens at the bottom-- impacting the people who do the actual work-- and rarely at the top where bloated bureaucracy sucks up most of the money.

How much more was that director paid to make working conditions and patient care worse by adjusting the number of people on the floor and how their time was allocated?

If the management/owners of such places had to spend a week doing what the CNAs do, they might have a vastly different idea of just how difficult and stressful that job is.

Add racism and self-entitlement on the part of residents/absent families/management and it just makes this whole situation worse.

Thanks for sharing this. It was disturbing, but the word needs to be spread.

[lovelokest]

I hated myself for doing it, but I stopped being a CNA because of the working conditions described in this article. I loved my residents and only stayed at the nursing home I worked at for so long (18 months) because I knew that if I left, they would get substandard care. I just burned out

[intrikate88]

I've gotten to know so many CNAs where I've worked and I've seen the working conditions or heard about what they left behind, and every single CNA who still loves their patients and has a smile for them and does their best is a hero to me, because in so many cases you can be a good worker or you can do what's best for people, but one won't keep you employed and that will take its toll.

And yeah. All of those CNAs have been POC, so it's really up for interpretation how that affected whether management needed to provide them workplace support. :/

[romp]

This is well delivered. I've seen the cut-backs and anti-union attitudes in other settings but the author did well to make it personal first by placing them in the vital work of caring for elders. Is anyone NOT frightened of being a resident in such a place?

I'm torn between the topic of dying and the topic of exploited workers. Two horrible things worthy of our attention. :/