A hospital?: To be or not to be one

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Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

William Cowper

Retirement (1782)

Older people sitting for long periods doing nothing in aged care homes is a stereotypical picture of aged care living. Yet it holds a grain of truth. We make people healthy, clean and well fed and then we bore them to death!

This is the area of aged care that needs most attention. Engagement and occupation in a meaningful life or a “life worth living” is the next frontier for aged care staff and management. It is ironic that in the ACFI it does not have any funding tagged for lifestyle provision.

We maintain the hospital livery we inherited from our forebears. The hospital style of aged care is no longer appropriate for a modern 21st century aged care home. There are too many successful examples of attempts to design aged care homes in a homely and non-institutional décor and organization for us to ignore them anymore. It is no longer acceptable to build homes that are more like warehouses for old people or hospitals for old people. No matter how much nursing care is required there is no need to make a long-stay care environment look like a short-stay nursing environment.

What do you think?

3 thoughts on “A hospital?: To be or not to be one”

  1. i find it the tranning of the staff they are not educated on communication or compassion each edugater is different diffent when i was a AIN and now as A RN there is no time due to lack of tranning and short staffing i worked in a nursing home for a short time this year and i was i1 RN for 180 residents you can not watch or educate staff they are left to do a job without supervission

  2. Agree wholeheartedly, but how do we fix with so few dollars, and properly trained activities staff with the right attitude. Mine are good for a lot of the time, but often they make me cringe! Also, some facilities (including new ones) are very difficult to work around. Hope I don’t last that long, because I’m going to be a right old hag if they try some things with me!!!

  3. Nor do our edlerly want to revert to preschool. In good faith many activities resemble stuff we do in kindy. It would be great to engage or even ask what are elderly want to do! Now there’s a thought….

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