Options for frail aged Pinoys by Jaime K. Pimentel

Euthanasia has never been an option to me.

If I live to be a frail 90-year-old geezer, I hope the quality of life in the nursing home where my children deliver me would have improved. I worry about what I see with my own eyes today and what I read about the quality of care in many nursing homes across Australia.

It’s not just about my fear of physical abuse and malnourishment in some nursing homes, but also mental abuse. As in a real case where the daughter of a 99-year-old resident/patient asked a senior nurse for a doctor visiting the home to see her mother quickly because she was in pain. The nurse’s reply was rude if not shocking: ”I already told your mother that the pain will stay with her until she dies!”

It is the kind of mental abuse that no decent human being must be allowed to hurl at another. Yet this is only one instance of a daily dose that many residents/patients endure, a majority of them in mute silence.

Nursing home staff have been known to refuse explaining bruises on resident/patients, shouting at them and manhandling them. In the Sydney Morning Herald website on Sunday, March 28, a news item read in part:

AUSTRALIAN nursing homes have reached breaking point, with reports of physical assaults increasing by more than 50 per cent, sexual assaults by 36 per cent and complaints rising at least 10 per cent.

The Department of Health and Ageing was notified of 1,411 alleged assaults in nursing homes in 2008-09. Of those, 1,121 involved alleged unreasonable force, 272 involved alleged unlawful sexual contact and 18 involved both. In 2007-08 there were 725 reports of unreasonable force and 200 reports of unlawful sexual contact.

The figures, contained in the 2008-09 Report of the Operation of the Aged Care Act, have alarmed aged-care staff, lobby groups and providers. They say the system is at breaking point due to chronic under funding and staff shortages.

”It’s a sign of a system under pressure,” Australian Nursing Federation federal secretary Ged Kearney said. ”There are some awful stories coming out and it’s very alarming.”

The website further said: The Dieticians Association of Australia reported last week that one in two aged-care residents was malnourished, putting them at a higher risk of falls and fractures.

Lynda Saltarelli, a spokeswoman for independent watchdog Aged Care Crisis, said standards were in constant decline. ”There is evidence that residents of aged-care facilities regularly go without proper pain relief and palliative care,” she said. ”Failures include poor infection control, inadequate clinical care, failure to provide safe medication management, failure to provide adequate nutrition or hydration, painful and avoidable bedsores, and inappropriate use of physical and chemical restraints.”

The Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme received 12,573 calls in 2008-09, up from 11,323 in 2007-08. The scheme examined 7962 complaints in 2008-09, up from 7500 in 2007-08. Most complaints related to health and personal care (4117), followed by abuse (2034), consultation and communication (1628), personnel (1471) and the physical environment of the home (1386).

I follow developments in aged care with anxiety. If living conditions in nursing homes do not improve and the spiralling trend continues, I might have second thoughts about the euthanasia option.

Updated: 2010-05-02 — 19:05:03

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