BRAUN: Now is the time to reunite LTC residents with their loved ones
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The situation in our long-term care homes is a national disgrace.
Around the world, 40% of all deaths during COVID-19 happened in LTC and nursing homes. In Canada, that number is 80%.
Long before the coronavirus arrived here, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) sounded alarm bells on behalf of the elderly in institutions. It has been saying for at least 15 years that persons in long-term care were at high risk. On the day in March when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, the RNAO executive was in a meeting with the Minister of Long Term Care, Merrilee Fullerton, discussing the crucial need for staffing changes.
The RNAO insisted on staff improvements, universal masking (PPE), resident testing and, if required, isolation rooms, but pandemic protocol is nothing new.
When the pandemic hit, the province was woefully unprepared — despite the fact that some 35 reports have been prepared over 21 years explaining how the situation had to change and how it could be changed.
“You don’t wait for a house fire to install a smoke alarm,” said Grinspun during a Monday night webinar. “You shouldn’t have to wait for an outbreak to care of these residents.”
Now, as Ontario surveys the completely avoidable wreckage in its LTC homes, the next element that must be addressed is reuniting families with their loved ones inside.
Visitors were banned across the country as a way to protect elderly clients from COVID-19, but what has happened in the absence of family members is more chaos, suffering, deprivation and death.
Many nursing-home residents rely on family members for particular personal care an understaffed facility cannot give them.
According to the RNAO, the time to reunite families is right now.
“If we don’t allow families back now, then when?” said Grinspun. “In the winter, things may get worse. For some residents, family is the only joy they have. And their families are concerned about what’s not being done for their loved ones. There are emotional and practical reasons why this has to change now.”
During the RNAO webinar, family members spoke of the experiences they’ve had trying to get back into nursing homes to tend to family members. The stories are heart-rending, disturbing and often infuriating. After four months of being deprived of family company, many residents are declining rapidly health-wise.
Some discover what shape their elder kin are in only when the facility believes the resident to be dying, and then admits family for brief periods. Not surprisingly, ‘dying’ patients often rally in the company of their loved ones.
So, what’s the barrier to returning?
The final decision about re-admitting family is up to each individual facility. Even someone designated the ‘essential family caregiver’ is not automatically allowed to come into a nursing home to help a loved one.
Many homes have said there are no exceptions, they have to err on the side of caution, etc. — but maybe that means they just haven’t fixed the issues with overcrowding, understaffing, PPE and testing that plagued them in the first place.
It has been four months now. Do they have something to hide?
Meanwhile, where are the government changes and improvements?
For all the hand-wringing and vows to make good with long-term care homes, the bottom line is this: Almost nothing has been done in 20 years. Nothing.
And unless something happens soon, all those thousands of recent deaths will have been utterly in vain.
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