How do we deal with how bad nursing homes are? Not enough aids, people left in their waste for hours until UTIs & sepsis develops, etc.

Is your mom in a nursing home now? They are horrible places, no doubt. But also a necessary part as people live so long and some issues like dementia linger for soooo long. My mom, with dementia, is in AL and it's not bad. Not perfect but I'm OK with it since I don't have to deal with her issues 24/7 like when she was living with me.

There are always shortages of people willing to do this type of work. It's not glamorous, that's for sure! I'm sure the administrators and stock holders make way too much money but not the staff. They are profit driven and it's just plain sad. I'm all for making a profit but not on the backs of those with needs that aren't being met. Or life savings being bled dry at an alarming pace.

You have to be a policewoman watching & making sure your loved one is taken care of properly. Just because you place them in nursing home doesn’t mean your job is over. Hugs 🤗

I never worked in NH's, but privately.

The pay was abysmal. And no raises, no matter how long you'd worked for them. This was one of the companies that you'd immediately recognize the name of.

I had skills and did a good job, but my training was a JOKE.

Until you can pay people a decent wage to do the dirtiest of work--you're going to have a lot of people jumping in and right out of the 'system'. As much as we have compassion for our clients. bottom line? I made almost twice as much money working for a boutique owner than for an aging care company. I cared for my clients, but I needed to make a decent wage. The work was brutal and I ruined my back for $9 an hour.

Also, if you don't feel appreciated (and my client did make me feel so--but my employers were obviously all about the $$) you tend to lose your zeal pretty quickly.

I have two certifications. I'm a Certified Nursing Assistant and a Home Health Aide. I simply refuse to work in a nursing home at this point. I did a private assignment at an assisted living facility one time and the place had roaches. It was a private room, but the client couldn't stand the aides. She would hold conversations with me. It was a hospice client.

For all the money these places charge, you would think there would be enough supplies to take care of these clients.

It is true, these places are being taken over by capitalists who probably never stepped foot in a long term care facility. Old people are a business.

Totally concur. Eldercare and hospice facilities are being bought up by private equity/hedge funds which could care less about what happens to the residents. Their objective is PROFIT. You're so right that elder care--actually, much of American healthcare in general--is built on the military industrial model. (I've called it the medical industrial complex for years.) It's not care, it's business. With "vulture" capitalists in charge, the current model doesn't bode well for the rest of us.

Frontline eldercare workers are seriously under-compensated and often under-appreciated by their employers despite the sky-high costs of eldercare.

Sadly it's hard to deal with. There really is a shortage of employees in this field, many workers know this and use this to their advantage.

I don't know but if you can come up with a solution you should be eligible for a Nobel prize. All I can say is if you see abuse document it (isn't it great that nowadays we all have a tool in our pockets that can do this) then report, report report.

People who don't get paid well tend to be workers who don't work well. There is money to be made off the elders, but it isn't their caregivers who are getting it. You cannot attract the best workers with no pay and poor benefits, and that's just a fact. Our system is built on the Military/Industrial model, on capitalism. Witness Hospice which was once a Mission and is now a Hedge-fund-Honey. It is sad because huge amounts of money are going into the system, and it is being stuffed up the coatsleeves of a very few. It is a great tragedy.