Nursing homes

The more time I spend doing this job the more astounded I get seeing the conditions that so many of our elderly are living in. There are such extremes from clean, well lit, well-supervised and caring environments to the most foul-smelling, dank, depressing places. There are appalling staff to resident ratios every shift. I've seen a 60 to 1 ratio on a nightshift, where the staff member was so overwhelmed by the number of high care residents that she's had to call an ambulance at 3 am to manage just a minor issue with one of the patients.

Then there are the inevitable calls where you get there and the resident is really sick, but there is nobody there who knows anything about the person. You can't get a decent past medical history from anyone. Nobody seems to know what the person is normally like - is the fact they are drowsy and drooling a new presentation, or is this how they normally are? I've dragged several poor old blokes out of bed and off to hospital only to find out that this "sudden onset of right sided weakness" is exactly how they have been for the last 5 years.

You will also frequently see weekend staff at nursing homes off-loading a number of patients when they get in at about 10pm on a Friday night - suddenly they'll clean out their most high-care or (as I've actually heard them called) most annoying residents so the weekend staff don't have to deal with them. All of a sudden you have an emergency ambulance being called on a lights and sirens response to "sudden onset of severe pain". I get really mad and frustrated when I get there and the patient is asleep and the staff are categorically insisting on them being taken to hospital.

I'll rant more about this later.