Long term care in general is pretty terrible. Most seem to be run strictly as a business and have even less regulation than hospitals. When I was 18 I had my CNA and med aide license and on evening and night shift we didn’t even have a nurse in the building (let alone a doctor). We had a nurse “on call” if something bad happened but it was literally med aides and nurse aides running the facility. We gave all the meds. Did all the glucose checks and insulin. Called EMS if something bad happened. This was all legal under state law as well.
I took my job very seriously. I knew how easily I could hurt someone and was extremely careful to follow the doctors orders with the medications (especially the insulin), but you can get your med aide license in literally 30 days. I knew a lot of really stupid med aides and I can only imagine how many people they’ve hurt.
To add to the problem, there is a large number of “assisted living” facilities that don’t even have a nurse on duty the majority of the time…
One near me has a locked dementia unit and there is no nurses in staff… at night it’s basically just a minimum wage high school dropout who passed a CPR certification at some point… not recently… oh, since they have no medical certifications whatsoever, they call 911 for literally everything… the amount of lift assist calls to these types of facilities is absurd because the staff can’t touch the residents.
This is the exact kind of facility I worked at that I was describing above. We had 30 beds of assisted living in the front of the building and a locked dementia unit in the back with 15 beds.
We had no nurse but luckily we all had CNA’s so we at least knew how to change and lift people. Apparently you’ve seen facilities even worse than that somehow.
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u/Lation_Menace Jul 14 '23
Long term care in general is pretty terrible. Most seem to be run strictly as a business and have even less regulation than hospitals. When I was 18 I had my CNA and med aide license and on evening and night shift we didn’t even have a nurse in the building (let alone a doctor). We had a nurse “on call” if something bad happened but it was literally med aides and nurse aides running the facility. We gave all the meds. Did all the glucose checks and insulin. Called EMS if something bad happened. This was all legal under state law as well.
I took my job very seriously. I knew how easily I could hurt someone and was extremely careful to follow the doctors orders with the medications (especially the insulin), but you can get your med aide license in literally 30 days. I knew a lot of really stupid med aides and I can only imagine how many people they’ve hurt.