megram - Index

megram - 55NovOttawa - Index

son comes into their room, and doesn’t
know what to do with them, it
can be upsetting to them.
The home’s administration supports
consistency of resident assignment
as a quality of care issue. It also
noted, however, that it is difficult to
achieve given the natural rate of staff
attrition and the regular introduction
of new staff and replacement parttime
staff.
Nevertheless, Dr. Stephen
Whittaker, an Ottawa-based physician
with the Spratt Road Medical Centre
in Riverside South advocates consistency
in care whenever possible:
In patients with documented
dementia or cerebral degeneration,
it is most important for the caretaker
to provide a stable loving environment.
These patients can’t adapt to
change easily and require routines
that they can rely on. Their thought
processes are more concrete than
abstract, so new stimuli or changes
to their environment become disruptive
and can cause extreme stress.
Even loud noises or bright lights are
adverse.
In the May 2008 report of the
Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), similar
observations were highlighted,and
the urgent need for additional staff
clearly identified. One registered
nurse shared that it was ridiculous to
wait until a diaper is 90 per cent full
before changing it when we don’t do
that to babies. But minimum staffing
levels, high patient-to-staff ratios and
lack of funding for incontinence supplies
have that adverse outcome.
The administrator of the home
where my father resides said that the
nursing budget is always in a significant
deficit. She stressed that this is
not due to inefficiencies or mismanagement
but is rather a direct result of
chronic and sustained under-funding
on the part of the Ontario Ministry of
Health and Long-Term Care
(OMHLTC). It is not a case of home
administrators not spending the full
amount allocated by the Ministry for
nursing services or re-directing those
funds to other departments or pocketing
them as profits.This would not be
possible, as any unspent nursing funds
are automatically returned to the
Ministry. In fact, this year’s nursing
budget is subsidized by $330,321
from other funding envelopes within
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the home’s overall budget.
The home’s administrator also
pointed out that staff can become
fatigued, which should be no surprise
given the increasingly higher number
of residents with dementia,
behavioural problems and more serious
chronic diseases. This reality was
just another important issue raised in
the OHC’s report. Unfortunately, the
current system continues to be ill-