This week, I have had the great honor of being featured on CNN network tv as its CNN Hero! It’s been an amazing experience, with lots of support from all across the nation for what we are doing. Naturally in a one and half minute video, the viewing audience only has a very small percentage of my story. Although the huge majority of the many letters I am receiving come from people who want to begin a Morningside Village in their own neighborhoods, a few people have raised vital questions:
- Were seniors really invisible to me before my mother’s nursing home experience? Of course they weren’t truly invisible. What was meant was that as individuals, many facing dire challenges, they were invisible to me. I did not particularly SEE them, walking along with canes or walkers, some feeling isolation and anxiety about what next.
- Will offspring rely on Morningside Villages to care for their elderly parents, burdening absolute strangers with the work of caring for dependent seniors? Currently in America, the reality is that many elderly parents are already living alone, far from their offspring. And, some never had any offspring. Others have outlived their families. Do we just live things as they are? Perhaps if, as Morningside Villages are born and thrive, including community campaigns of care for the elderly, all of us will become more compassionate in relation to our elder family members as well as to strangers. Our volunteers find that helping to care for the elderly has brought them profound gifts. We are recipients of the rich legacies that our elders continue to provide us. We are enriching and developing our communities. And, we are finding that many of our elderly members are caring friends. We enjoy doing what we feel is the right thing.
- Finally, there is Sherry’s comment about the great care given to residents in nursing homes by the people who work in them, specifically the one where she works. Are all nursing homes negligent?
Of course not. And, Sherry, seems an extremely caring person who is truly dedicated to quality care. Nevertheless, it is well known that, in too many nursing homes, nursing assistants are underpaid, under-trained, and overworked, and this is a situation that translates into mistakes in care for residents. This was the case in the three different nursing homes where my mother was admitted. The U.S. government provides us with the results of broad scale inspections of nursing homes across the nation. On average, they experience a high 78% annual turnover in staff. In addition preventable conditions, including dehydration, bedsores, and some portion of depression and anxiety, among other health problems, are high in many facilities as well. The New York Times published an article about the overuse of psychotropic drugs in the typical nursing home where “staffs are stretched thin and inadequately trained in mental health care.” (Paula Span, NY Times, January 11, 2010, 8:00 am, Overmedication in the Nursing Home). I have found that many people say they don’t ever want to have to end up in a nursing home…although they do not mind visiting for short-term rehab purposes. There are good reasons why. For permanent residents, aside from loss of one’s home with its memories and recognizable objects and people, they are often subject to “industrialized” food, aggregate care (over individual need or wishes) and mistakes in care. If someone needs continual medical care, it is my hope that she or he winds up in a life-affirming facility, like yours seems to be. Hats off to you, Sherry, and to those who are part of the movement to change the culture of eldercare in our nation! For more about culture change, see the links to the Eden approach and the Green House Project on our website. We greatly approve of the facility that can truly be called a nursing “home”!
Irene Zola
Tags: aging in communities, aging in place, CNN, CNN Hero, eldercare, elderly, Morningside Village, seniors, volunteerism, Volunteers
