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Poor old folks

Shadylou

Well this sounds grim
https://www.rte.ie/news/health/2018/1003/1000721-saint-finbarrs/

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Franz Von Peppercorn

Ugh. I’m booking into dignitas.

Atlantic Dawn

So will the report be used as nothing more than wallpaper for the place or will management actually lose their jobs for failure to run the place properly?

TheValeyard

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Ugh. I’m booking into dignitas.

Nah

Just book onto a cruiseship. It will be cheaper, go on round the world trips and die at sea

Shadylou

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

So will the report be used as nothing more than wallpaper for the place or will management actually lose their jobs for failure to run the place properly?

I'd say they'll blame budgets and hse staff shortages

Roger Hassenforder

*Books non return flight to Switzerland for Jan 1st, 2050

TheValeyard

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

*Books non return flight to Switzerland for Jan 1st, 2050

Bad idea. You're probably going to be hungover. Last thing you want to do is fly and die with a headache.

Sycamore Tree

Having worked in the HSE as a management consultant I can tell you that it's an absolutely money pit where nothing runs efficiently and never will. It was set up to fail and it will continue to fail in epic fashion. I now think that throwing money at the problem actually makes it worse. There is no value and it sends the wrong message. I don't ever see a day where a government is brave enough to sort it out. Too many vested interests that will block all reform and accept the status quo - Unions, bloated Management layers, Consultants, bloated Admin layers etc etc.

It needs to be abolished and re-created correctly next time with 1000s of non front line compulsory redundancies. Never happen of course.

fryup

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

yep, pass the parcel pass the blame

emo72

Like childcare, they want staff with level 6. And want to pay minimum wage.

When I get old I want to die so I don't give my children heartache or money problems.

But this country. Well, just cuntz basically.

Shadylou

We're unfortunately going to have to try to find residential care for my granny and this place was recommended to us as one of the best in cork &#55357;&#56864;&#55357;&#56864;

Graces7

some of the HIQA reports make hard reading.

OMM 0000

Serious:

In Asia, when your parents get old, they come live with you. The idea is they took care of you when you were young, so you can take care of them when they are old. They also help raise the grandchildren. There's also a strong concept of the family unit - the family look out for each other.

I know so many Irish people, including my own family, who put their parents in nursing homes, even though there were spare bedrooms, etc., where the parents could have lived.

Isn't there something kind of cold about the Irish (Western) way of doing things? It's as if we don't want to inconvenience ourselves with the old folk. I remember my grandfather's nursing home was over 1 grand a week. Surely it would have been cheaper (and nicer) to hire a helper to look after him in one of the family homes.

Shadylou

OMM 0000 wrote: »

Serious:

In Asia, when your parents get old, they come live with you. The idea is they took care of you when you were young, so you can take care of them when they are old. They also help raise the grandchildren. There's also a strong concept of the family unit - the family look out for each other.

I know so many Irish people, including my own family, who put their parents in nursing homes, even though there were spare bedrooms, etc., where the parents could have lived.

Isn't there something kind of cold about the Irish (Western) way of doing things? It's as if we don't want to inconvenience ourselves with the old folk. I remember my grandfather's nursing home was over 1 grand a week. Surely it would have been cheaper (and nicer) to hire a helper to look after him in one of the family homes.

My granny is at an advanced state of Alzheimer's and needs round the clock care, my mam and aunt have looked after her between them for the past 10 years but it's affecting all their health at the moment.
Its all very well to say bung them in the spare room and hire a helper ( which btw can cost up to €2000 a week if the person needs round the clock care) but not if youre compromising their care

Graces7

Met one old lady. She was incontinent. She had an hour a day home help. Her neighbours used to take her a dinner in but were leary of doing more in case she lost that hour a day. HSE also did laundry once a week....

She was got up, dressed and sat in a chair. Under the chair was a big bowl/bucket so the urine could run in. The stench in the room was ...

We asked if she would not be be tter off in a home but she wanted to stay home.

Not sure what help folk get to stay at home these days?

Fr_Dougal

Shadylou wrote: »

We're unfortunately going to have to try to find residential care for my granny and this place was recommended to us as one of the best in cork ��

After this report, there will be a lot of focus on this accommodation. You’d be better off staying with it.

badtoro

Shadylou wrote: »

OMM 0000 wrote: »

Serious:

In Asia, when your parents get old, they come live with you. The idea is they took care of you when you were young, so you can take care of them when they are old. They also help raise the grandchildren. There's also a strong concept of the family unit - the family look out for each other.

I know so many Irish people, including my own family, who put their parents in nursing homes, even though there were spare bedrooms, etc., where the parents could have lived.

Isn't there something kind of cold about the Irish (Western) way of doing things? It's as if we don't want to inconvenience ourselves with the old folk. I remember my grandfather's nursing home was over 1 grand a week. Surely it would have been cheaper (and nicer) to hire a helper to look after him in one of the family homes.

My granny is at an advanced state of Alzheimer's and needs round the clock care, my mam and aunt have looked after her between them for the past 10 years but it's affecting all their health at the moment.
Its all very well to say bung them in the spare room and hire a helper ( which btw can cost up to €2000 a week if the person needs round the clock care) but not if youre compromising their care

Yup, this.

People who don't directly provide care for their own elderly relations (for whatever reason) are not able to grasp the enormity of the task and it's affect on the care givers.

EdgeCase

What I never understood is why what amounts to “hostel like” accommodation in multi bed rooms is deemed to be acceptable for the old and the sick here.

I would absolutely hate to have to share space with a bunch of strangers and go from having my own home, dignity and privacy to living in some kind of weird Victorian hospital 5 to a room with bad and depressing facilities.

How is this ever acceptable?!

My mum died recently (and quite young) in a big, relatively modern public hospital and what shocked me was the lack of privacy. It was a multibed neurology ward and at one stage I was at the bedside and a man across the room was clearly being given use of a bed pan. I nearly got sick with the smell. The only ventilation was the open windows.

That and there were people who were clearly likely to die (my mum for example) sitting in beds opposite people who were very likely to recover.

When my mum died we didn’t really know what to do.
I went for a bite to eat and when I walked in and found she was dead and went rushing out to the nurse who nurse who already seemed to be vaguely aware of it.

Then a priest came in and did some kind of blessing thing.

Then we were just left there and had no idea what to do next.
Do you just stand there?

Nobody took us anywhere. There was no space to bring her. We had no idea where her body was going. We ended up kinda sitting in a corridor hugging and crying until we went home and the was still nowhere to go with the body.

You'd kind of expect maybe they'd wheel her out into a quiet space where the family could get their heads around what just happened, but no such place seemed to exist.

I had to ask staff what to do next and nobody seemed to know.

She went from totally normal breakfast to dead in 24 hours.

I have no idea what you're supposed to do. My dad was in actual shock and I was on autopilot and we ended up just going home. It felt awful as there was such a weird lack of respect to the whole thing. The hospital just went on as a big acute hospital and we felt like we were in the way.

The whole system here is a mess.

I can't pin blame on individual staff. they were all nice and friendly but there were no systems.

I’m still in shock about it tbh a few weeks later. I still get nightmares.

Hector Savage

I think ill just do away with myself when I reach 70 ... providing im still healthy.

CruelCoin

Shadylou wrote: »

Well this sounds grim
https://www.rte.ie/news/health/2018/1003/1000721-saint-finbarrs/

I'm just back from visiting a dying relative in Holland and I cannot believe the disparity between that article and what I saw over there.

The Hospice she's in had 7 rooms, I was greeted at the door and asked for coffee, and it was more a quasi-hotel than anything else.
Staffed by volunteers, part-funded by the state and charity driven the rest.
And that apparently is the norm.
Providing dignity for your final days is a driving theme there and people are active with their fund-raising efforts to provide it, where the state cannot.

Such a difference. We need to stop with the Trocaire/Concern crap and fund-raise for those who need it at home instead.

EdgeCase

Had the experience of visiting an Irish hospice and if was similar to what you're describing.

St Finbarrs is an old, old former workhouse that contains the HSE Geriatric and long term care services for some of the HSE facilities in Cork City.
It's not a hospice.

It's like a blast from the part of a bygone era of the HSE.

I encountered a vast contrast when my granny was dying. She was briefly in St Mary's HSE facility in the Phoenix Park and it was like the area she was in was last decorated in the mid 50s. I don't know if it's improved over the past few years but it was grim at that stage. We felt absolutely awful when leaving her there overnight but that was where she was to be "assessed". We got her very quickly back to home care packages.

Then she went to a hospice in Raheeny which was phenomenally good. it felt more like a hotel than a hospital.

CruelCoin

Hector Savage wrote: »

I think ill just do away with myself when I reach 70 ... providing im still healthy.

Nah dude,

Sky-diving, scuba trips, bungee jumping, all the good and exciting stuff.
What's the worst that could happen?

wexie

Graces7 wrote: »

Not sure what help folk get to stay at home these days?

Very little and it's very hard to get. The crazy thing is that providing (more) adequate homecare usually is cheaper than long term hospital care. But there isn't enough funding for the homecare so many people end up staying in hospitals far longer than they should, even though that's costing much more and they (and the family) want to go home....

EdgeCase wrote: »

I can't pin blame on individual staff. they were all nice and friendly but there were no systems.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss and the circumstances

. It's really not good enough for people and their families to be treated like that in times like those.

But you're right you can't blame individual staff (certainly not the ones you might have seen on the hospital floors) in my experience they are doing the best they can and the ones that seem like they don't are just worn down by trying so hard to do good and being hampered by a completely broken and inefficient system.

EdgeCase

It’s not the staff. Individually they were doing their best and were extremely busy doing medical things. It’s an extremely busy neurological ward and people were arriving with head injuries, strokes, seizures and they were dealing with people recovering from brain surgery in other areas of the same floor.

The consultant did their absolute best to be there and talk to us when she was being treated but when she died it was like there was just nobody.

You literally need bereavement counselors on site who can immediately just step in and make sure the whole sad exit from hospital is done with dignity. It’s not even a religious thing. It’s just you need someone to be able to take you and your recently departed loved one to a calm, quiet room and coordinate making arrangements.

The undertaker was actually far, far, far more helpful than the hospital.

What I always feel in Irish hospitals is that there’s nobody coordinating anything. I’ve found this even in expensive private Irish hospitals and public hospitals. You arrive in and you’re assigned to a consultant and the hospital is just sort of working around you without anyone as a point of contact. You’d think each specialty would have a team of hospital doctors and that every patient would be assigned a GP-like person who can interface between the hospital and the patient and manage and facilitate their care, but nope - instead you’re basically left to your own devices in semi organized chaos.

It’s almost as if instead of it being a hospital, it’s one of those coworking spaces where a whole load of self employed people use facilities to work on totally independent projects. There’s never anyone to interface between the patient and the hospital. You often can’t seem to get information or find your consultant or have to resort to ringing their office on your mobile to get information.

The other big issue is the patchy nature of quality of facilities. Brand new wards are usually “ok” but anything from older eras is usually diabolical. How the hell we are still building expensive new facilities with multibed wards, over hot radiators, no HVAC systems and so on is beyond me.

There’s something very wrong with the specifications of these facilities.

Wibbs

badtoro wrote: »

Yup, this.

People who don't directly provide care for their own elderly relations (for whatever reason) are not able to grasp the enormity of the task and it's affect on the care givers.

+1000. Having done it myself for ten years, mostly on my own for five of those years and with only decent help in the last two it takes a huge toll on your life. When you're in it you tend to either not notice because you're too involved in other stuff, or you get used to it(or think you do). You only notice when the person dies and the aftermath hits and the realisation that years of your life are gone passed in limbo. My advice? As harsh as this sounds, if you find yourself in the position of primary carer, especially in the case of dementia and it could potentially go on for more than say a year or two; don't do it. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't and my life would have been very different today.

Kivaro

EdgeCase wrote: »

.....

When my mum died we didn’t really know what to do.
I went for a bite to eat and when I walked in and found she was dead and went rushing out to the nurse who nurse who already seemed to be vaguely aware of it.

Then a priest came in and did some kind of blessing thing.

Then we were just left there and had no idea what to do next.
Do you just stand there?

Nobody took us anywhere. There was no space to bring her. We had no idea where her body was going. We ended up kinda sitting in a corridor hugging and crying until we went home and the was still nowhere to go with the body.

You'd kind of expect maybe they'd wheel her out into a quiet space where the family could get their heads around what just happened, but no such place seemed to exist.

I had to ask staff what to do next and nobody seemed to know.

She went from totally normal breakfast to dead in 24 hours.

I have no idea what you're supposed to do. My dad was in actual shock and I was on autopilot and we ended up just going home. It felt awful as there was such a weird lack of respect to the whole thing. The hospital just went on as a big acutely hospital and we felt like we were in the way.

The whole system here is a mess.

I can't pin blame on individual staff. they were all nice and friendly but there were no systems.

I’m still in shock about it tbh a few weeks later. I still get nightmares.

I am very sorry for what you and your family went through.

We had a similar experience. And while most of the staff in the ICU were very nice to our family, we were treated with contempt by the head nurse and the doctor doing the rounds. As our elderly father lay dying and had hours to live, we had to deal with confrontational staff, as more of my siblings arrived from far flung areas of the world. We were extremely respectful of the environment and the requirements of the ICU unit, but there was a complete lack of respect and dignity for my father's last hours on this earth. I have to point out again though that many of the ICU unit nurses were truly inspirational and understanding.

The HSE is a mess; it needs to be torn down and re-built again, but this time from the bottom up.

OMM 0000

badtoro wrote: »

Yup, this.

People who don't directly provide care for their own elderly relations (for whatever reason) are not able to grasp the enormity of the task and it's affect on the care givers.

How are they able to do it in Asia?

wexie

EdgeCase wrote: »

The other big issue is the patchy nature of quality of facilities. Brand new wards are usually “ok” but anything from older eras is usually diabolical. How the hell we are still building expensive new facilities with multibed wards, over hot radiators, no HVAC systems and so on is beyond me.

Have you ever heard the story of the 5 monkeys?

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under the banana. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, researchers spray all the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result... all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, all the other monkeys assault him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm, because he is now part of the "team" and has learned the rules.

Now, the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairs for the banana. If they could talk, they would simply say, “We’ve always done it that way.”

So realistically, in the case of the HSE (and many others) we should just start with all new monkeys

EdgeCase

I think though to get back to the original topic. Every facility in the HSE should be evaluated from the point of view of a secret shopper.

Having facilities as poor as what’s being described in St Finbars is unacceptable. There’s money. There are staff. There’s public and political support for doing this right. What’s missing is the organisational ability to implement services.

However well intentioned and well funded it may be, it doesn’t work. The services are awful and nobody seems to be prepared to just call it out for what it is: chaos dressed up as an organisation. I just see a whole load of frustrated and well intentioned staff running around in circles in a system that is completely dysfunctional.

Even calling it a “system” is probably not a valid term. It’s a bunch of medical staff and buildings.

I also think the staff are largely institutionalised to accept that this is normal. It’s not and shouldn’t be. Chaos and low standards are accepted and normalised and staff who want to work in better systems leave and find jobs elsewhere and the HSE just chomps down on a new intake of canon fodder who will mostly become discontent and leave to go to better systems elsewhere and the cycle repeats.

I don’t think we can realistically just go on with a system that is basically destroying both patients’ and staffs’ lives! It’s doing “stuff” but achieving nothing.

Wibbs

OMM 0000 wrote: »

How are they able to do it in Asia?

They're not. Sure, if someone is just old, but is not suffering from a degenerative condition and has all their marbles intact. IMHO people like that should be with their families. If anything they're a positive in family life. However if someone needs 24 hour care such as in the case of stroke victims or dementia that's a very different situation.

If there is just one carer which is often the case(and often an equally aged spouse) the level of work and attention required is extremely high. If you've not done it or know someone who has done it, you just don't realise the effort required. Funny enough I got far more sympathy and help when the parent I was caring for ended up bed bound and helpless, yet when they were profoundly mentally compromised and mobile it was of a magnitude harder to cope. Put it another way, when they were admitted by ambulance to hospital and their treatment was looking like at least a week's stay, they were so troublesome I was called the second night to come in and stay and watch them(with a security guy in tow). When I returned the next day they were ready for discharge. They weren't, but the district nurse and me were left with that aftermath.

EdgeCase

I think people have very unrealistic notions of what caring for someone in that kind of condition actually involves.

My grandmother died of cancer and was as sharp as a tack until the very end. She just needed physical assistance with doing things but was very much her normal self otherwise. She had big physical issues but she didn’t need “looking after” and was able to function very well with just an odd visit from a home carer and family looking out for her.

I’ve seen other relatives who’ve died of deterioration of brain function and it is very, very, very challenging to cope with that and many families may not even be able to do so.

You can very easily get into scenarios where a spouse, child or sibling is left in totally untenable situations as a full time carer. There are plenty of cases where people have sacrificed their own happiness, health and young and middle age tirelessly looking after relatives. You do need facilities for some people but they should be properly setup and run.

We have a lot of badly broken services.