Adopt a Nursing Home to Improve Dying Experience

Did you know that nearly 90% of America's nursing homes are severely understaffed?
Did you know that roughly 30% of nursing home residents are malnourished because nobody takes the time to feed them?

These statistics are sad and I can attest to them first hand. In the four years between graduating high school and entering nursing school I worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant in three nursing homes. I was the one in charge of making sure the residents that needed help eating got it. I was responsible for feeding anywhere from four to eight residents that couldn't eat on their own, and I usually had a half an hour to do it. Take into account how slowly some of the residents ate or how much cajoling it took to encourage them to eat and you can see how this was a problem.

This isn't how we want our beloved elderly spending the last years, months, or days of their lives, is it? So, I would like to encourage all of you to rally your company, organization, community group, or faith community to adopt a nursing home. If 30 people volunteered one hour of their time one evening a month to help feed frail and disabled patients, think of the benefits!

What does this have to do with palliative care? Everything! Palliative care is essentially comfort care. For the many patients in nursing homes that either don't qualify for or don't access hospice care, death is still inevitable - it's inevitable for all of us! Suffering with hunger and malnourishment because nobody has time to help you eat is not comfortable and not the way anyone should spend the last years, months, or days of their lives.