Track 3

I chose track 3: home institutionalized: life in nursing and assisted living facilities. In the first article,"Quality of Life in Assisted Living Facilities: Viewpoints of residents", the author offered statistical data that was variable on many fronts, however the most important, I thought, was concerning the correlation between the loss of Independence and the onset of depression, and perhaps the undertone of hopelessness as it was apparent the patrons of the assisted living places became acutely aware that the end of their life was nearing. The first article gives all the baseline data that one could want as far as physical and mental ability versus handicaps and mental degeneration.
The second article, "Half of Nursing Homes Come Up Short; Administrators Say Below-minimum Staffing Levels a Result of Widespread Nursing Shortage", discusses the high turn over rate in nursing homes and assisted living communities, citing that staff just are not dedicated enough. Though I have worked in assisted living and know differently, it is not the dedication of staff, it is generally a scheisty boss that will not pay you enough to make ends meet and cuts costs by getting minimal groceries for patrons, not to mention the staff is not very well screened. So you end up working with some pretty iffy characters in some cases. If they payed better, they'd keep employees, and if they could keep employees they would have ample staff to assist the patrons. These places seem to run like used car lots, where the organization itself tries to pocket as much money as possible while making employees run some gilapi into the ground and taking its patron passengers with it.
The third article was actually an interview called "Assisted Living vs. Nursing Homes", which described that new legislation is mandating that people in assisted living, once they reach a certain level of clinical need,be moved to a nursing home. Though the sentiment of this is well seen, the whole process of moving someone from an assisted living place, where they were told they could live out their life, to a nursing home to die appears to be quite abrasive and offensive, leaving patrons without a sense of security, belonging, or any means of maintaining self esteem. An assisted living environment should not be able to evict any paying patron. After all, it is kind of the unspoken hope of the patrons themselves to be able to live out their lives without the regulations of being bedridden in a nursing home. The point of assisted living places is to be able to preserve that last bit of dignity and self respect of being mostly independent. It seems as though this new piece of legislation in Iowa gives these cash cow businesses an out in their promise spoken to their patrons of being able to live out their lives.
The fourth article, "Personal Routine", discusses the importance of having a personal routine and highlights this phenomena that we all share, but gives one the impression that when we age it becomes more important, the details of this routine. The personal routine is truly a totem of independence. After all, it is a constant in our day to day when day to day can be so unpredictable.
In conclusion, these articles offered an insight into the pros and cons of assisted living and nursing homes, what the differences are, and what the dysfunctions are. They illustrate the problems of under staffing effecting quality of care, which in turn is fraudulent and should be against the law because the patron is not getting what they paid for. It forces people to sacrifice independence against their will, and puts them in a place of having to adapt or face whatever unsaid consequences that one can deduce by giving some thought to what the options may be if we were in a similar predicament. They all reinforce a key piece of advice many of my friends that are up in age liberally relay: never grow old, it's hell growing old.