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and which I would later be employed by. My grandmother contracted the influenza rapidly and was so severely sick she had to be hospitalized. She died in the hospital a few days later. It was a tragic loss and had she been at home she in all likely would not have contracted influenza.

It has been my observation that the main bulk of the care is given to a nursing home patient by the CNA. The Registered Nurses stay pretty much at the desks and bark out orders and do paperwork while the Licensed Practical Nurses usually administer the medications. This leaves the bulk of care of your elderly loved one to people who in some cases do not even have a high school diploma or GED but do have a CNA license and who do not always make the right decisions. The CNA spends more time in the room with your loved one than anyone else on the staff. They bathe and help dress the patient, feed them or assist them with their meals, refill their ice pitchers, take temperatures and blood pressures, change dressings, and are to alert the nursing staff to any problems that have arisen. They are also the one called to the room if the patient has soiled themselves and need changing. This often isn't done quickly enough when you only have two people trying to care for forty patients. The result is the patient develops rashes and often has raw, even bleeding skin and it is very painful for the patient.

In addition to all this the patient's funds are often depleted by the cost of nursing home care. Before a patient can go on Medicaid, Social Services has to do a financial background check. The elderly person cannot have transferred their property to another family member within 3-5 years, depending on what state you live in. Often a patient has too much assets to qualify for Medicaid and in the end the family property is left at stake.
It is not the nursing home "taking" the property away from the patient, but the State making the patient meet financial criteria to qualify for Medicaid which will pay for their services above what little Medicare pays and for which the patient has no other means of paying. Medicare has a very limited policy on payment for nursing home, usually only covering sixty days. Exceptions occur when the patient has to be transported to the hospital and is gone a required amount of days to qualify for Medicare payment upon readmission.

A patient who is cared for by family members feels more at ease, remains happier and usually lives longer. No one knows your family member any better than you. You are usually just as capable of alerting their doctor to changes in the patient as a member of a nursing home staff would be. You are not going to leave your loved one lying in their own feces for an hour before changing them. You are not going to humiliate your family member by parading them down the hallway in front of others naked or semi naked. You certainly are not going to allow sick visitors into the home and put your family member at risk.

Caring for an elderly patient at home can be an extremely tiring task and if you have no help from other family members it may be that you have no choice but to admit them to a nursing home. For as long, though, as you are able to care for them at home the patient is so much better off. You will also have no guilt or regrets when the patient leaves this world.

Learn more about this author, Ty Fillers.
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