Boomer Caregivers Can be a Force for Change in Nursing Homes

Most of us would rather not have to live our last months or years in a nursing home. Certainly, almost no one would choose this option if all nursing homes were like the ones of past decades.

Based on military and prison hospitals and run for the efficiency of staff, the old nursing home model was a horror. Are there still homes like this? Unfortunately, yes. However, an educated public and an aging boomer generation that has never taken orders meekly are two powerful forces pushing change.

This change, led in the U.S. by the Pioneer Network and others who work hard for person centered nursing homes, is turning the nursing home model on its ear. Nursing home "culture change" leads to person centered care. The ideal would be for every home to have a brand new facility from ground up, plenty of well trained staff all with the personalities of angels and superb training. That's the ideal.

I think most of us agree that the ideal is rare. However, there is a strong steady glow of light at the end of this dark tunnel of historic nursing home care. During the fifteen years I spent visiting a local nursing home for one or more of my seven loved ones I ushered through their last years, I saw many changes. I see even more now.

This home I'm writing about had just, at that time, change its name from Fargo Nursing Home to Rosewood On Broadway. When my neighbor, Joe, for whom I'd become the default caregiver, broke his hip, I had to find a place for him. Rosewood was near our neighborhood and his being there made it possible for me to continue to visit daily. This was the early nineties, and the home was as good as could be expected at the time.

During the fifteen years when I was a fixture at Rosewood, since it eventually became home to my uncle, my mother-in-law and both of my parents, I saw the home go through three owners. The first, when Joe was there, was church based. By the time my uncle had his third stroke and could no longer be cared for at home, the home had been purchased by a secular agency.

While tending to my uncle once he was situated at Rosewood, I moticed improvements during the two years after Joe's death and my uncle moving in. Much was redecoration, but also there was a less rigid mentality when it came to residents and their individual personalities. I was pleased with the changes and got to know the staff well. Eventually, my dad had brain surgery that sent him into horrible, irreversible dementia. Then my mother-in-law became incapable of doing well even with my daily visits and she was too paranoid to accept in-home help for the gaps when I couldn't be there. She moved to Rosewood, which was just down the street from her condominium. She felt safe there and she flourished.

My mother eventually joined my father at Rosewood, as her falls were so frequent that my twice daily routine with her wasn't enough to keep her safe. It made sense to her to join dad, even though they each had their own rooms.