My dad has been in a nursing home for 2 years. Results of a stroke. In those 2 years the nursing home has lost his watch twice, broken his reclining chair, lost his glasses twice and misplaced his hearing aids for a week and now lost his left hearing aid.
My siblings and I have been very patient with them during all of this.
Right now in order to get his hearing aid replaced I have to call the local VA and make another appointment for dad to have his hearing checked so he can get another pair of hearing aids.
We have talked to the director, asst. director, director of nursing and social worker about all of these losses. Nothing seems to help.
I need suggestions on what else we can try or do to help the situation. The answer they give us is from the nursing home is "We have a lot of new people working" and sometimes they are not careful.
I have thought about moving them to another nursing home but the others are not rated very well.
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You're not going to like this.
If that list of items is comprehensive, they're not doing badly. Not compared with some I have heard of.
The frustration and bafflement I *completely* sympathise with. But the "what to do about it"... things like this do get lost. It almost seems to be their mission in life. They roll under beds. They hide down the side of cushions. And in my case, with glasses, I swear they have a mind of their own and they're doing it on purpose.
I don't know if it might just about be possible to get insurance for the high cost items like hearing aids?
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As for dropped items, ever notice the underside of a hospital bed? The crisscross of the large legs that hold up the bed? Well, that is where I found my Mom's eye glasses, the glasses were folded up against one of the legs.... I didn't see it until I got a flashlight to search under the bed and was down on my hands and knees.
Chances are more like 100% that my Mom dropped her glasses and somehow they got brushed under the bed. A nursing home would have no reason to lose personal items, or to break anything.
And with hearing-aids, yep they can get wrapped up in a tissue. The cleaning staff isn't going to open up a crumpled tissue, and with hearing aides being as light as they are, one wouldn't feel the weight inside the tissue.
I wonder if hearing aids are still made inside of eye glass frames?
The same issues would be happening in any nursing home or long term care facility. Heavens, missing items can even happen at home.
What is better use of both your & the staffs time & energy.... a missing watch? OR that your elder is getting their medications correctly?
Realize vast majority of the residents at a NH have cognitive issues with some type of dementia. If you go to meals or activities, you’ll see residents take off their glasses to wipe the lenses and they stay on the table; they take off their watch over & over to set the time & inevitably leave the watch off; they take their dentures off for dessert & leave them. Residents go in & out of rooms, there will be a Mr or a Mrs. “happy hands” who wanders in and takes hairbrush and jewelry and pockets them as they think it’s their room & their stuff. Residents take off their hearing aids or dentures and place in Kleenex and eventually they go into the trash bin. Being MIA yearly for a watch, pr. of glasses, a set of hearing aids, 2 pairs of shoes, hair stuff (brushes, pins, scrunchees) is in my experience par for course for a NH or other communal living. For my mom even if stuff was boldly marked or had her initials painted on with bright nail polish it still walked.
As an aside, in his admissions paperwork there likely was a page or paragraph regarding limitations on responsibility for theft. For both my mom & mil, the was an inventory sheet to fill out in detail for clothing, personal items, electronics etc., with a liability disclaimer.
I found even putting my dads name and room number in multiple locations on items didn't stop them from disappearing.
I would find out if technology is such that a gps tracker could be easily added to his hearing aids or get the cheapest ones posted to help him hear.
Frustrating, but it is what it is.
Hope this helps .