I am 62 up to date on my Covid, flu, pneumonia, and RSV vaccines. I am an outpatient dialysis RN and I struggle with some of my patients and vaccines. I give them the facts and tell them I have gotten them all with no issues. Sometimes it helps to tell them I had no issues with the vaccines. I struggle more with family members but most of the time I win.
:) I think telling people what you see (that you do fine with it, as do others) is appreciated. I know the Inside Medicine likes data. But outside of our echo chamber, sometimes personal experience is valued more than anything. So thanks for sharing that with them!
I have a relative who is in a nursing home in a wealthy town in MA. They’re short staffed. They provide a flu shot, but you have to go to a pharmacy for a covid vaccine. So I keep track of my relatives’ covid vaccines and take her to get them. It’s surprising that a covid vaccine isn’t a standard nursing home option. My experience from visiting a few nursing homes in the state is that they’re often short staffed, and workers call out sick a lot??
I’ve been visiting my relative at this one for 3 years. It seems we as a society… need to pay health care aids and assistants more money to get more workers. Increase the wages for the people who do bedside care, brush teeth, help people get dressed and use bathroom (fall prevention), ambulate with assistance or monitoring etc. ~ encourage eating and drinking water ~ hydration ~ plus a little emotional support and daily conversation …the literal basics for human dignity and basic daily wellness, hygiene, safety. We gotta invest more into these resources and also make long term care actually affordable. Long term care is such a giant economic issue obviously and for families it’s often really difficult in general to navigate and understand. Happy Thanksgiving to all health professionals working on Thursday…and holidays to help others .
I think a lot of the problem may be lack of understanding and lack of information for the older residents of many of these places. Not all nursing homes are created equal either and patients can be very isolated. I've worked in many at all levels. If management is breaking down in them combined with under-staffing then it can get dangerous for the many residents who are more vulnerable than the outside population. Case in point was Holyoke's Soldiers Home. And I also wonder about the staff and what the stats are on their vaccinations, a crucial part of the safety and health of older residents of these places.
You're absolutely right that there is a difference in facilities. In fact, large places do worse than small ones. There are also differences by the wealth of the region the facility is in.
Staff rates are important but short-lived effects in any case. I really, really wish nursing home staff had to take flu RSV and covid TESTS on a routine basis. We don't want to be vectors of illness.
Many people fail to understand that once you are in a nursing home you forfeit your right to have your own personal physician or other PCP. This leaves you the only option of an overwhelmed MD/NP who may be the provider for the entire or even multiple nursing homes. I wish that the CDC would take more responsibility for ensuring that this vulnerable population has a nearly 100% vaccination rate (minus exemptions). Even better would be to reduce corporate profits of these vast entities and increase funding for staffing at every level. Happy Thanksgiving! Grateful for you sharing your knowledge.
That is a very interesting point. I'd never heard that (or at least, I don't know how common it is, nor how it can be enforced) but I agree that even if it is not the case "officially," you're right that this happens (i.e., they lose access to their PCP) and then this is the result. I 100% also agree that this should be an extremely high priority metric. They have many useless ones. But this one should be #1
I wish more physicians were better educated on these issues. Most, I imagine, are too overworked to spend time researching or even reading posts like yours here. Instead, I think they just take routine guidance from the health “experts” - who have retreated into a sort of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil consensus, intended to deflect the kind of angry reactions from much of the public who resented discomforting recommendations earlier in the pandemic. How can we break this (truly) deadly loop?
I started to read your post today Nov 29th about the rates of cervical cancer, paused the app/article to look something up about the content & now the post is gone. More correctly I can't find it & was hoping to ask a follow up question to one of the comments. Direction please & thank you.
I am 62 up to date on my Covid, flu, pneumonia, and RSV vaccines. I am an outpatient dialysis RN and I struggle with some of my patients and vaccines. I give them the facts and tell them I have gotten them all with no issues. Sometimes it helps to tell them I had no issues with the vaccines. I struggle more with family members but most of the time I win.
:) I think telling people what you see (that you do fine with it, as do others) is appreciated. I know the Inside Medicine likes data. But outside of our echo chamber, sometimes personal experience is valued more than anything. So thanks for sharing that with them!
I have a relative who is in a nursing home in a wealthy town in MA. They’re short staffed. They provide a flu shot, but you have to go to a pharmacy for a covid vaccine. So I keep track of my relatives’ covid vaccines and take her to get them. It’s surprising that a covid vaccine isn’t a standard nursing home option. My experience from visiting a few nursing homes in the state is that they’re often short staffed, and workers call out sick a lot??
I’ve been visiting my relative at this one for 3 years. It seems we as a society… need to pay health care aids and assistants more money to get more workers. Increase the wages for the people who do bedside care, brush teeth, help people get dressed and use bathroom (fall prevention), ambulate with assistance or monitoring etc. ~ encourage eating and drinking water ~ hydration ~ plus a little emotional support and daily conversation …the literal basics for human dignity and basic daily wellness, hygiene, safety. We gotta invest more into these resources and also make long term care actually affordable. Long term care is such a giant economic issue obviously and for families it’s often really difficult in general to navigate and understand. Happy Thanksgiving to all health professionals working on Thursday…and holidays to help others .
It's just a commentary that YOU have to do this to fill the gap. Thank you for doing it!!!!!!!!
I think a lot of the problem may be lack of understanding and lack of information for the older residents of many of these places. Not all nursing homes are created equal either and patients can be very isolated. I've worked in many at all levels. If management is breaking down in them combined with under-staffing then it can get dangerous for the many residents who are more vulnerable than the outside population. Case in point was Holyoke's Soldiers Home. And I also wonder about the staff and what the stats are on their vaccinations, a crucial part of the safety and health of older residents of these places.
You're absolutely right that there is a difference in facilities. In fact, large places do worse than small ones. There are also differences by the wealth of the region the facility is in.
Staff rates are important but short-lived effects in any case. I really, really wish nursing home staff had to take flu RSV and covid TESTS on a routine basis. We don't want to be vectors of illness.
Many people fail to understand that once you are in a nursing home you forfeit your right to have your own personal physician or other PCP. This leaves you the only option of an overwhelmed MD/NP who may be the provider for the entire or even multiple nursing homes. I wish that the CDC would take more responsibility for ensuring that this vulnerable population has a nearly 100% vaccination rate (minus exemptions). Even better would be to reduce corporate profits of these vast entities and increase funding for staffing at every level. Happy Thanksgiving! Grateful for you sharing your knowledge.
That is a very interesting point. I'd never heard that (or at least, I don't know how common it is, nor how it can be enforced) but I agree that even if it is not the case "officially," you're right that this happens (i.e., they lose access to their PCP) and then this is the result. I 100% also agree that this should be an extremely high priority metric. They have many useless ones. But this one should be #1
I wish more physicians were better educated on these issues. Most, I imagine, are too overworked to spend time researching or even reading posts like yours here. Instead, I think they just take routine guidance from the health “experts” - who have retreated into a sort of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil consensus, intended to deflect the kind of angry reactions from much of the public who resented discomforting recommendations earlier in the pandemic. How can we break this (truly) deadly loop?
Yup. Sounds correct.
I think Nancy's point is the way. We need vaccine rates in nursing homes to be a top priority in metrics/ accreditation.
Dr. Faust
I started to read your post today Nov 29th about the rates of cervical cancer, paused the app/article to look something up about the content & now the post is gone. More correctly I can't find it & was hoping to ask a follow up question to one of the comments. Direction please & thank you.