klaus
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Mar 11, 2009, 9:19 AM
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Gastroenteritis takes toll on seniors
If you or a loved one is confined to a nursing home one of the greatest dangers that can befall residents is an outbreak of a communicable disease. Perhaps among the most devastating disease that can befall elderly patients is viral gastroenteritis, also known as noro virus. When reading how this disease is spread, one would think that it would be impossible for such an illness to find purchase in a healthcare facility, given the care such facilities usually take with hygiene. But it does happen and more often than one might imagine.
A recent outbreak in a nursing home in Brockville, Ontario resulted in the deaths of five residents, most from dehydration, which is likely the greatest threat posed by this class of disease. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta advises healthcare facilities every precaution in stopping the spread of this disease, including enhanced hand hygiene, the wearing of surgical masks by residents and staff and isolating patients with the disease.
The Brockville facility went so far as to order a complete shut down to all outsiders and only allowed nursing staff and personal support workers in during the quarantine. This practice created more problems than it solved for a number of reasons. First of all a number of nursing and PSW staff also contracted the disease and could not work, which exacerbated the facility’s already serious staff shortages, causing residents to be neglected.
The families of several residents of this facility had hired private PSWs to augment the care provided by the nursing home. Thus when the nursing home quarantined itself it shut these private workers out and deprived the residents they were charged with caring for of their services. As more and more staff members became ill with the disease, the residence was forced to contact the Red Cross to ask for temporary nursing and PSW staff.
Many family members of residents were incensed that they could not visit with their loved ones while some family members accused the residence management of unnecessarily sedating residents to make them easier to manage. This charge has yet to be proven, but a number of family members claimed that telephone conversations with the residents were eerily disjointed.
Unfortunately, diseases do tend to break out and spread even in the most hygiene conscious environment. It’s one of those unpleasant facts of life. These diseases also tend to be hardest on the weakest and little good can come out of assigning blame for the outbreak.
However, there is no excuse for the lack of trained staff being readily available to take the place of staff that contracted the disease. This likely exacerbated the severity of the disease and prolonged the outbreak. Also, the decision by the residence management to lock out the private PSWs was unconscionable in that a short course in proper hygiene would have taken some of the pressure off the residence staff, leaving them more time to devote to the care of other residents.
Hindsight always tends to be 20/20, but in this case it isn’t hindsight, as this type of outbreak has been known to strike many other such facilities and residence management should have had a contingency plan in place.
Klaus Rohrich is President and Creative Director of Taylor/Rohrich Associates Inc., a marketing and advertising firm that specializes in niche marketing retirement real estate developments
http://www.maturitymarketing.com.
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