Nursing Homes and Violations
An average nursing home got 7 violations, studies indicate, with 94% of for profit homes likely to get them, 91% of government run homes, and 88% of non for profit homes.
Homes that accept medicare and medicaid are surveyed every 12 to 15 months and have shown these results.
They are not surprising however. Non for profit homes are usually the best choice because they do what they do for the residents and no other reason. For profit homes are businesses and skimp on as much as possible to increase their profits. The most crucial thing they skimp on is staff. By skimping on the number of Cna’s to residents they save themselves money but cut down on care. By skimping on the Cna’s salary they are skimpimg on quality of Cna’s. That has a lot to do with some of the care violations these homes are getting.
The states themselves set the standards at a minimum amount of staff to residents, and that’s what the for profit homes follow. If the states lowered the amount of residents per Cna they would all get better care.
New Safe Haven Law In Nebraska
Nebraska lawmakers are upset about the number of children left by parents under the new safe haven law which allows children to be left at places like a hospital when they wish to give them up.
The truth is, as I understand it, is that the law was meant for infants who would be abandoned, but the law was not written stating an age, so people assume that children or minors means anyone under the age of 18.
Last week a father dropped off 9 of his children ages 1 to 17. His wife had died in childbirth with their last baby and he could not face raising all these children alone so he left them at an emergency room. Since the law was enacted in July the state of Nebraska has had 16 abandoned children, including these nine. So that means besides this family they’ve had 7 others in the entire state and they are thinking about revising the law.
Maybe it’s just me, but 16 children does not seem like a lot to me when compared to the whole population of Nebraska.
The goal of this law was to protect children from being left in garbage cans to die, or being murdered by parents who couldn’t keep them. If they do change the law and put age limits on the children, what would have happened to this family of nine siblings?
As I see it either way they would have become a problem of the state as either murder victims, or wefare cases, or maybe even criminals because of lack of supervision.
That is the reality sometimes of having baby after baby after baby as the bush administration would have all Americans do, since they’ve been passing legislation about some birth control methods being the same as abortions, and their declaration that life starts when sperm meets egg.
In light of that the proper thing would be is for the federal government to fork over some funds to take care of these unwanted kids.
More Health Care for the Poor in New York
The City Counsel of New York City has set aside 26 million dollars to be used to create 10 new health care centers in underserved areas in New York. They are finally responding to the complaints by the poor and uninsured that were asked to fill out a survey that named the various problems with the current state of available health care. Among those complaints were that doctors and nurses didn’t spend enough time with patients. Appointments were not timely and patients had to wait long periods of time before they could even get in to see their doctors, and that medical staff didn’t listen well and care itself was too expensive.
As with everywhere else in the country, New Yorkers are using the ER as their primary doctors, and that situation is not good for anybody. It’s hoped that by creating these additional medical centers the people that need them will be better served and get better care, and it will ease up the traffic at area hospital ERs.
Girls Hand Reattached After Jump Rope Accident
In early September a mother picked up her six year old daughter and placed her in the car seat in the back seat of their car. The girl had a jump rope which she threw out of the open window, the other end around her wrist. The end that went out the window wrapped around the axle of their car and immediately ripped the girls hand off. The mother turned to see blood spurting everywhere and no hand at the end of her daughters wrist.
She stopped in the street and several other cars passing by stopped to help. One man tied his belt around the girls arm to stop the bleeding, one woman called for help, while another couple found the childs severed hand and directed traffic around it.
The girl underwent ten hours of surgery to reattach the hand. The surgery went well and the doctors believe there’s a good chance that the little girl will eventually regain full use of her hand. Doctors say the operation was difficult because of all the tiny veins, nerves, and blood vessels.
Proton Beam Radiation for Cancer Treatment
When cancer patients recieve radiation treatment for their cancers, they are actually getting x-rays to the area of the tumor. The problem with x-rays is that the tissues around the tumor get the radiation also and can be damaged even though they are healthy.
Proton beams, on the other hand can be pinpointed directly on the tumor, sparing the healthy tissue around it. Moreover researchers claim that by using proton vs. other radiation they are able to reduce the risk of the cancer coming back from 12.8% recurrance with other forms of radiation, to 6.4% recurrance for those treated with the proton beam.
Experts maintain there is no real solid proof that this form of radiation treatment is better than the traditional radiation. However there are a growing number of former cancer patients who swear by the proton beam radiation.
The other problem with the proton beam therapy is that there are so far only about 5 proton centers in the United States. The centers cost millions of dollars to build, must be as big as one or two football fields, and have walls that are at least 10 foot thick concrete.
Despite all of that, there are a number of new centers being built as we speak.
Doctors and Empathy
Researchers looked at the relationships between 137 patients and their oncologists or thoracic surgeons and found that even when the patients seemed to ask or need some understanding their doctors were cold and unfeeling.
The doctors of course did respond to physical concerns about pain and things of that nature however they did not even try to satisfy patients emotional needs even when it was a matter of life or death.
These are examples of doctor/patient interactions from the archives of a Veterans hospital.
“Patient: But this is kind of overwhelming, you know…I’ve had anxiety problems before. I go to the [mental health clinic]…
Doctor: Okay.”
Here’s another,
“Patient: …I worked very hard when I was a young man, young boy. I was doing a man’s labor and was always told I had a good strong heart and lungs. But the lungs couldn’t withstand all that cigarettes…
Physician: Yeah.
Patient: …asbestos and pollution and second-hand smoke and all that other stuff, I guess.”
Physician: Do you have glaucoma?”
…and one more,
“Patient: I don’t know what the average person does in just two years, three years, a year?
Physician: I think that you certainly could live two or three years. I think it would be very unlikely … But I would say that an average figure would be several months to a year to a little bit more.”
At first it was thought that maybe the doctors weren’t responding because they were too busy, but it was found that other doctors who had empathy for their patients actually spent less time with them.
They suspect the real reason the doctors lack empathy is that they would then identify with patients they maybe could not save and would see themselves as failures. It’s also thought they may be reminded of their own mortality.
Quotes from Los Angeles Times
BPA and Diabetes Links
BPA or Bisphenol A has been found in the bodies of every 9 out of 10 Americans. The FDA claims that the amounts found do not pose a health risk to anyone, no matter what age.
BPA is a chemical that disrupts hormones and has been used extensively to harden plastic for food and beverage packaging. However it’s also been found in drinking water tooth fillings and even dust in the home. It’s so wide spread that it’s virtually impossible to avoid it.
A survey showed that about 1,500 people who had a high exposure to BPA had a 40% higher rate of liver damage, diabetes, and heart disease.
Experts say that more studies are needed to prove that the BPA is a health hazard. The FDA said that further research should be done.
Even though a link was found between BPA and diabetes and liver damage, there is a question as to whether it is just coinsidence because those diseases don’t come on overnight.
This writer thinks that the FDA should not have been so eager to call the chemical safe if there was any doubt that it was, and to me the studies mentioned cast enough doubt to where the FDA should have investigated further.
Flood Update
I just wanted to let you know about our flooding problem. We finally have our new carpeting and it looks great. Today they are coming to lay new tile on the bathroom floor, and will be doing the kitchen in a couple more days.
I am of course grateful that it wasn’t worse and that my family is all in tact. It is however hard to part with furniture and items that have been part of our lives many of which, since I was a kid. I just keep reminding myself that those material things would only be with me for so long anyway and I can get along perfectly fine every day without them.
In the last post I told you about what to do when it floods. I’d like to tell you what happened with my neighbors and what they did differently.
The day after we flooded my landlord asked that we pull up all the carpeting and padding. We did so because we had to stay here and didn’t want to walk on smelly wet carpet. Also he told us the sooner the floor dried the sooner we’d have new carpeting.
We pulled up the carpeting and immediately bought a couple bottles of disinfecting pine cleaner and mopped all the floors. The day after that it came to our attention that we should have used bleach, so we bought a couple gallons of it and remopped the floors. We also put some straight bleach into a spray bottle and and sprayed the corner and the edges of the floors where it was hard to mop because of carpet nails.
My neighbors refused to pull carpeting or move anything. They didn’t feel it was their job or responsibility. They moved their family to a relatives house and left the cleanup for the landlord. As a result their carpeting sat on their floors an extra day. The maintenance man went back the day after that and told us they had mold growing up the bottoms of the walls already. With their mold growth came extra cleaning and scrubbing. Also, had they been there, they most surely would have become ill.
Floods and Your Families Health
I am only one among thousands who have been victims of floods. Our apartment flooded and as bad as it is right now I know that many people have gotten it worse than we did.
As this is our first time I thought I’d share with you a couple things to remember if you should flood. We knew it wouldn’t be fun, but we didn’t think it would be this bad either. What I’ve learned so far is, even though it’s only been 24 hours ago that it happened our apartment stinks already. That probably means that mold is already starting to grow. We’ve ripped up all the carpeting and thrown it away. The cement floor underneath still looks wet. I thought it would dry right away, but apparently the surface of the cement seems to have actually absorbed some water. I didn’t know cement could do that, but I can’t think of any other way it could still be wet after hours already of air drying.
We’ve also removed all our clothing from the apartment and after washing it are storing it in another apartment on an upper floor that’s vacant. It seems like everything that’s still here is becoming damp and stinky. We’re washing hands often, especially after cleaning or touching anything in contact with the flood water.
My daughter who lives with us is having her fist baby in about three weeks, so the fist thing we did was to remove all the baby’s things and move them to the other unit. Our landlord was nice enough to allow her to stay in the other apartment till our rugs are replaced. It can’t be good in her condition to stay down here with us in these conditions.
Our maintenance man tells us that our cheap kitchen cabinets are made of particle board and that it acts like a sponge so that it will draw water up into it and then expand, warping the cabinets. I would say the chance of us getting the cabinets replaced too, is slim to none.
To be honest with you it’s very depressing to lose some possessions and have to live in these conditions, so I will post more tomorrow hopefully on a different subject.
Retail Medical Centers
Retail Medical Centers are those clinics usually run by a nurse practitioner who is there to treat simple and common conditions such as colds, sore throats, and Ut infections.
From the start, doctors did not like this idea because they reasoned that first if you’re anything less than a doctor you can’t possibly be able to diagnose a sore throat or cold, and second they said that it would interfere with the relationship between the doctor and patient.
It would seem that they are wrong on both counts. First doctors do not always diagnose and treat correctly, and second the nurse practitioners go to school for years and often have many years experience.
A couple of recent studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of patients that go to these clinics have no regular doctor, no health insurance, and no regular medical care. It seems logical to me that instead of having these people running to the ER to be treated for such minor and common ailments, or even tie up a doctors time with these things, it’s better for everyone that they visit these inexpensive clinics.
On top of that, any nurse worth her salt will be able to recognize conditions that may be out of her league and will refer the patient to a doctor or hospital. In this writers opinion these clinics are sorely needed and wanted. I believe in the long run they will save the entire medical system money as well as the patient involved.