Nursing Home Residents’ Rights Week - October 5-11
By Dorinda Gamberdella
Elder Services will honor the individual rights of long term care residents by celebrating Residents’ Rights Week, October 5-11. Designated by the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, the week highlights the importance of residents’ participation in discussions about improving the quality of care in their long-term care facilities. This year’s theme, “Recipe for Home: Creating and Defining Home in Long-Term Care Facilities,” emphasizes the importance of empowering residents of long-term care facilities to define what home means to them and the need for others to honor their choices. This approach enhances the residents’ quality of life, as well as the working environment for the hard-working nursing home staff, resulting in less turnover and improved care.
There are currently some 2.7 million Americans living in 62,000 nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and board and care homes across the country. This year we commemorate the 21st Anniversary of the Nursing Home Reform Law, which recognizes each resident’s right to make individual choices in how he or she receives care and to form independent residents’ councils. The law guarantees individual rights to residents, which include but are not limited to: individualized care, respect, dignity, the right to visitation, the right to privacy, the right to lodge complaints, and the right to make independent choices.
Elder Service’s Long Term Care Ombudsman Program has worked tirelessly for more than 26 years to promote residents’ rights. Currently 23 Ombudsman Volunteers make weekly visits to Berkshire County’s 16 nursing and rest homes, averaging more than 1,200 visits a year Ombudsmen assist residents with complaints, provide information to both residents and families, and advocate for positive change in the Long Term Care system.
Over the past year, residents and family members have brought a number of concerns to Ombudsman volunteers, such as extended waits for response to call bells, short staffing, infection control, missing personal items, dietary issues and personal hygiene concerns in the scheduling of showers and baths. Ombudsman volunteers and nursing home staff work together to resolve these issues.
A young resident with Cerebral Palsy longed to live as independently as possible. The Ombudsman Program was able to work with the nursing home, the Mass Rehabilitation Commission, Project Aim, the Department of Mental Retardation, and the University of Massachusetts nursing home initiative staff to enable him to move out of the nursing home and into a handicap-accessible apartment.
Volunteer Ombudsmen work with the nursing home dietary departments to resolve food issues and check to be sure the carts delivering the food have their doors closed in between serving each resident, to keep the food hot. Lost laundry issues are investigated, resulting in resolution or reimbursement to the resident. Ombudsmen check to make sure staff are wearing their identification badges so that residents know who is taking care of them. Most importantly, the presence of Ombudsman volunteers lets the residents know that their needs and concerns count, that someone outside the facility is listening and someone cares.
A three-day training to become a state-certified ombudsman is scheduled for November 19, 20 and 21. If you have an interest in becoming trained or would simply like more information about the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, please call 499-0524 or 1-800-544-5242, extension 726 or 165.
Dorinda Gamberdella is Elder Services’ Ombudsman Program Director.
