Kitty4670 wrote:
People are dying in nursing homes, cuz employees don’t care enough,
There are those who do not care.
And there are those who do care.
And then there are businesses and the government ...
From
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/opin ... homes.htmlQuote:
Ask anyone in long-term care why the pandemic has been so damaging, and “staffing” will be the reply. Sufficient numbers of well-trained nurses and aides have always been the key to managing disease, and during the pandemic, homes with higher staff-to-resident ratios have had fewer positive coronavirus cases and casualties. Such facilities are, however, rare.
It’s hard to hire for a job that involves helping others bathe and eat, dressing wounds, and cleaning and providing emotional support — for low wages, little paid time off, a short career ladder and unpredictable part-time hours. Factor in the risk of getting sick and dying, and retention, let alone recruitment, becomes far more difficult. In 2020, direct caregiving may have been the most dangerous job in America.
It’s telling that many nursing homes have chosen to hire temporary subcontractors (who are actually paid at higher rates) rather than increase wages and benefits for permanent employees.
But maybe with that, things will get better,
(bold is the New York Times own)
Quote:
Joe Biden is about the age of the average nursing home resident. Over the summer, he announced a $775 billion proposal to provide care for children, seniors and people with disabilities. The plan, though notional at this point, would eliminate the 800,000-person waiting list for long-term care under Medicaid and pay for 150,000 new community health workers for seniors. It could also help transform millions of low-wage, high-turnover, often transient gigs into stable careers.
But to prevent another disaster on the scale of the coronavirus, the Biden-Harris administration (and state and local regulatory bodies) should go further.
Quote:
And certified nursing assistants must be paid a living wage — in most places, $20 or more per hour. A recent study found that such an increase would finance itself by elevating the standard of care. With stable, better-paying jobs, nursing-home staff members could also avoid working in multiple facilities, helping reduce the transmission of the coronavirus and other, future viruses.
Most telling is this from workers
Quote:
Yet Danielle, like many workers I interviewed, has thought about quitting. “There are jobs that offer $45 per hour to do Covid testing,” she said. As if to nudge her out the door, her nursing home was recently purchased by a large corporation, nullifying the union contract, and management reneged on the promise of holiday bonuses.
The facility hadn’t yet received its shipment of vaccines, but Danielle, who called herself a “usually pro-vaccine person,” told me that she and most of her co-workers weren’t planning to get the shot. Scientists agree that the vaccines are safe and well worth the risk, but it’s easy to understand Danielle’s mistrust. After all the death she’s witnessed, she doesn’t believe that pharmaceutical companies or the government or her bosses have suddenly come to value caregivers’ lives.
_________________
"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011
18 Jan 2021, 8:51 am
