Emotional Burden of Admitting a Family Member to a Nursing Home

There's an old joke that many of you have seen on coffee mugs and bumper stickers that goes like this: "Be kind to your kids as they will choose your nursing home."  The reality is that putting a family member in a nursing home is a very difficult and scary process not unlike dropping an infant off at day care for the first time.  The law is clear that nursing homes are required to provide quality care.  Residents are not to develop pressure ulcers unless they are unavoidable, suffer malnutrition, and care plans must be in place to prevent serious injuries like falls.  Yet  preventable injuries happen at alarming rates in nursing homes.

Here is a link to a very compelling story published in the Richmond Times Dispatch about the emotional toil of placing a parent in a nursing home. 

There are steps we can take to prevent nursing home injuries which I will be speaking about at an upcoming conference. I'll be posting more information, but as starting point visit www.medicare.gov and follow the links to "nursing home compare."  Each nursing home is given a rating of 1-5 stars and you can view the results of unannounced inspections and complaint reports.