San Mateo-Barbara Bollier, a 93-year-old San Francisco, said that she only made Valentines for one person: her husband. And although he isn’t any longer alive, this 12 months was no different.

She lives at Sunrise from San Mateo, a facility for assisted living for seniors. On Friday, senior helpers for in-home senior care sponsored a card trip for the residents to alleviate the loneliness that some could feel on Valentine's Day. Bollier's card was covered with heart -shaped stickers and she or he wrote a message to her late husband: “Happy Valentine's Day (wherever they are).”

According to the previous American general surgeon Vivek Murthy, loneliness, isolation and lack of connection are a crisis of public health within the country. This lack of connection can have physical health consequences, including a 29% increased risk of heart diseases and an increased risk of stroke.

“Social isolation can be very widespread in the older community. It is therefore important to go to places where your family is far away to bring only this feeling of connection to the seniors,” said Rebeca Gonzalez, spokesman for senior Helpers.

Senior Helpers employees offer seniors for his or her homeland by helping them with day by day life activities. The organization serves individuals who continue to exist the San Francisco peninsula to Sunnyvale. According to Gonzalez, a branch in San Jose also serves municipalities in the complete South Bay.

At the event on Friday, the Gonzalez and Sunrise employees made Red and Rosa Cupcakes and cups of ice cream. Gonzalez also brought Cardstock paper, markings, glue and stickers in order that the residents could produce Valentine's Day maps. Some wrote friendly news for the staff and thanked them for the establishment of events, while others were addressed to relatives.

“I think you do your best what you can do here to make it a nice day,” said Bollier.

Gonzalez also distributed colourful cards that she had collected from friends who work with children.

“It is very thoughtful from you to remember people who are in the facility and strangers in this area,” said the local pilar Sabalvaro. “We don't know them, but I think they are very thoughtful from the elderly people who are resident here.”

According to a national survey by the University of Michigan, a healthy aging in January 2023, a 3rd of the seniors stated that they feel isolated, having an absence of camaraderie and rare social contact.

Sabalvaro, who lives together with her husband at sunrise, said she “had no choice” than to live in the power, and added that it could not feel right to force her children to get up because that Would be “selfish” and you’ll have your personal life.

“You feel lonely because contact is different,” said Sabalvaro. “They are busy, they come, most of them give them and I know that they give the best you know how and that is calming.”

Bollier said she never really felt lonely, but it’s because her family is “really good” for her.

“I am lucky in this way because there are some people who don't have it,” said Bollier. “If I hadn't decided on a family, I wouldn't have the family that I am doing now.”

Sabalvaro, nonetheless, said she accepted the offer to participate within the event on Valentine's Day since it rendered the community.

“If you are alone at home, it is very lonely and there is no activity,” she said.

Few people need to go right into a nursing home, nevertheless it could also be the appropriate alternative in case you or a loved one has a physical or mental disability or is recovering from surgery.

Unfortunately, there are huge differences in quality between nursing homes and plenty of wouldn’t have enough nurses and caregivers to supply residents with the care they need.

Q: How do I find nursing homes which are suitable?

Start with Medicare Online comparison toolwhich you’ll search by city, state, zip code or name of the house. Get advice out of your state's designated individuals who help elderly or disabled people discover a nursing home. Each state has a “No Wrong Door” system. Contact for such inquiries.

You may also contact your area's seniors agency, a public or nonprofit agency, or your area's long-term care ombudsman, who may also help residents resolve their problems with their nursing home.

Find your local Agency for Ageing and Ombudsman through the Federal Government Elderly care finder Website or call 1-800-677-1116. Identify your Ombudsman through the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Carean advocacy group. Some people use private agencies, but they could only refer you to homes that pay them a referral fee.

Q: What should I discover before visiting a house?

Search online for news and reviews from residents or their families.

Call the house to ensure that beds can be found. Reputable homes could have long waiting lists.

Find out the way you pays in your stay. Most nursing home residents rely totally on private long-term care insurance, Medicare (for rehabilitation stays) or Medicaid (for long-term stays when you might have few assets). In some cases, the resident pays the prices entirely out of pocket. If you might be more likely to run out of cash during your stay or your insurance coverage is insufficient, ensure that the house accepts Medicaid. Some won’t accept Medicaid-insured people unless they pay for the care themselves.

If the person requiring care has dementia, ensure that the house has a lockable dementia care unit to make sure residents don’t run away.

Q: How do I do know if a house has enough staff?

Medicare's comparison tool gives each home a rating from one to 5 stars based on staffing levels, health inspection results and measures of resident care, resembling what number of residents had pressure ulcers that worsened during their stay. Five is the best rating. Below that overall rating is one specifically for staffing.

Be sure to take a look at the annual turnover rate, found at the underside of the Human Resources page. Anything higher than the national rate—a staggering 52%—should provide you with pause.

Also concentrate to the Inspection Star RatingThe ‘quality’ star rating is less reliable because homes self-report a lot of their results and have an incentive to whitewash their performance.

Q: Does a 3, 4 or five star home provide excellent care?

Not necessarily. Medicare rankings compare a house's staffing levels to those of other homes, to not an independent standard. The industry shouldn’t be as well staffed as many experts think: About 80% of homes, even some with 4 or five stars, are staffed below the Biden administration's standards. would require houses come together over the following five years.

Q: How many staff are enough?

There isn’t any clear answer. It is determined by how frail and sick the nursing home residents are. Medicare requires homes to prominently display their staffing levels every day. The notices should show the variety of residents, registered nurses, state nurses, and nursing assistants. Nurses are essentially the most qualified and direct care. LVNs take care of wounds and catheters and perform basic medical tasks. Nursing assistants help residents eat, dress, and use the toilet.

Experts have differing opinions on the perfect staffing level. Sherry Perry, a nursing assistant from Tennessee and president of the national skilled association, believes that a nursing assistant should ideally take care of eight or fewer residents.

Charlene Harrington, professor emerita of nursing on the University of California-San Francisco, recommends that there be one nurse for each seven residents who need physical assistance or have behavioral problems on the day shift, one nurse for each 28 residents, and one caregiver for each 38 residents. Patients with complex medical needs require more staff.

There could also be fewer staff at night because most residents are sleeping, Harrington said.

Representatives of the nursing home industry say that there isn’t any uniform ratio and that a Federal government study published concluded last yr that quality may very well be improved by employing more staff, but didn’t recommend a particular level.

Q: What should I search for during a house visit?

Observe whether residents are energetic, whether or not they are alone of their rooms or slumped in wheelchairs within the hallways. Do they still wear pajamas in the course of the day? Do nurses and caregivers know residents by name? Is food only available at mealtimes or can residents get a snack in the event that they are hungry? Observe a meal to see if persons are getting the assistance they need. You might visit residents at night or on weekends or holidays when staffing levels are at their lowest.

Q: What should I ask the residents and families in the house?

Are residents cared for by the identical people or by strangers? How long do they need to wait for help bathing or getting up? Do they get their medications, physical therapy and meals on time? Do caregivers arrive quickly once they activate their call light? Delays are a transparent sign of understaffing.

Medicare requires homes to permit residents and families to form councils to debate common problems. If such a council exists, ask to talk to its chair or a representative.

Ask what number of nursing staff and nursing assistants are on-site or come from temporary agencies; temporary staff have no idea the needs and desires of the residents as well. A house that relies heavily on temporary staff is more likely to have problems recruiting and retaining staff.

Q: What do I would like to learn about running a house?

Turnover at the highest is an indication of trouble. Ask how long the house manager has been within the position; ideally it needs to be at the very least a yr. (You can look up home manager turnover on the Medicare Comparison Tool: you'll find it on the staffing page under “Staff Turnover.” However, remember that the data will not be current.) You must also ask concerning the length of service of the director of nursing, the highest clinical leader in a house.

As you tour the power, observe how the staff treats the one that will likely be living there. “If you come in to visit your mother and they greet you, but your mother doesn't, or she gives you all her attention, go somewhere else,” advises Carol Silver Elliott, president of Jewish Home Family, a nonprofit in Rockleigh, New Jersey.

Q: Does it matter who owns the home?

This is commonly the case. Nonprofit nursing homes generally provide higher care because they will reinvest revenues back into the house somewhat than giving a portion of it to owners and investors.

But there are some superb for-profit homes and a few lousy nonprofit ones. Since most homes on this country are for-profit, it’s possible you’ll not have a alternative in your area. As a rule of thumb, the more local and present the owner, the more likely the house is to be well run. Many owners live out of state and conceal behind shell corporations to shield themselves from responsibility. If representatives at a nursing home can't provide you with a transparent answer if you ask who owns the house, re-evaluate.

Finally, ask if the house's ownership has modified within the last yr or so, or if it's up on the market. Stable, well-run nursing homes aren't normally those that owners need to eliminate.

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(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one in all the core programs of KFF – the independent source for health policy research, polls and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Originally published: July 23, 2024 at 11:42 am

A housekeeper at a Concord nursing home who was allegedly banned from speaking her native Spanish at work will receive damages as a part of a settlement together with her employer, in keeping with a federal labor regulator.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which announced the settlement, said it investigated and located evidence that Pennsylvania-based Healthcare Services Group had implemented an “English-only” policy in violation of federal civil rights law.

Following this result, the corporate, which operates in 48 states, negotiated with the housekeeper to comply with pay her damages, the commission announced on Wednesday. The amount of the damages and the name of the worker weren’t disclosed.

Employers can impose restrictions on the languages ​​spoken by their employees whether it is vital to conduct business safely or efficiently, but not for discriminatory reasons, says Rosa Salazar, acting director of the agency's Oakland office.

“Customer relationships and customer preferences do not justify discriminatory actions,” Salazar said, adding that the settlement requires the corporate to coach its workforce in California “to recognize and prevent this form of national origin discrimination.”

The company didn’t reply to questions on allegations of an English-only workplace policy.

For almost 200 years, Florence's name has been Nightingale Synonymous with gentle compassion and mercy.

in the course of the nineteenth century Nightingale became perhaps probably the most famous woman She was the second largest queen of her time after Queen Victoria because she introduced hygiene practices that significantly reduced the mortality rate amongst British soldiers fighting within the Crimean War. A beautiful bronze statue in London's Waterloo Place, Nightingale was immortalized as a slim, graceful figure with a lamp, the embodiment of selfless femininity.

But this iconic image dwarfs many other achievements. Nightingale too modified care right into a respected career, founded the primary nursing school on this planetused the relatively latest science of statistics to enhance health care outcomes and redesigned hospitals. She was also considered one of the primary in Western history Advocate for health look after all.

In the five years I spent researching and writing my biographical novel about Nightingale, “Flight of the wild swan“, published March 12, 2024, my vaguely sentimental ideas about her were replaced with respect for her visionary achievements. I made a decision to shine a greater highlight on this woman who, along with her legendary work as a war nurse, spent half a century pushing advances in healthcare.

The nineteenth century brought quite a lot of revolutionary medical advances. Nightingale's contributions were a big a part of this era.

Called to serve those who are suffering

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820, to William and Frances Nightingale, a wealthy British couple. The Nightingales raised their two daughters, Florence and sister Parthenope, on two estates in England. William taught the women at home, giving them the equivalent of his own education at Cambridge University.

Nightingale from a young age showed a formidable intellect, with a selected interest in mathematics. At 16, she experienced a transcendent call to serve those that are suffering, a calling that ultimately translated into her decision to develop into a nurse. However, her family objected, saying nursing was an unsuitable career for young, privileged Victorian women. It was considered disreputable work and had a fair lower status than servants.

But Nightingale step by step overcame her family's objections, training in Germany and France. In 1853 she became superintendent of 1 small hospital in London for “desperate gentlemen”..” Most of her patients were educated, single governesses whose health had deteriorated under the strain of long hours and low pay.

A bit of over a 12 months later, she was on the solution to the Crimean War.

Bringing hygiene into medicine

In October 1854, Nightingale brought 38 nurses under her supervision Scutari Barracks in Constantinople – today's Istanbul. Originally a big stone barracks for the Turkish army, Scutari was now a British hospital housing hundreds of wounded English and Irish soldiers.

In Scutari, she and her nurses found little provisions, hardly any medicine or edible food, and overcrowded hospital wards filled with rats, lice and raw sewage. More soldiers died from cholera and other infectious diseases than from battle wounds. Nightingale and her nurses set about cleansing and obtaining food, soap, bandages, medicine, clean linens and clothing for the patients. As living standards improved, Scutari's The frightening mortality rate began to say no.

It was there that Nightingale's fame because the “Angel of Crimea” and “Lady with the lamp” began. War journalists telegraphed dramatic accounts of their work to their newspapers. These stories captured the general public's imagination and created the indelible image of a slender, female figure carrying her lamp through hospital wards at night.

In January 1855, British Prime Minister Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston, sent a newly formed Sanitary Commission to the Crimea to analyze high mortality rates within the hospital. Nightingale observed firsthand the dramatic decline in mortality rates because the commission cleaned the hospital's polluted sewage systems, whitewashed its partitions—killing surface bacteria—and made quite a few other sanitary improvements.

Nightingale was already a proponent of Hygiene, fresh air and proper nutrition in medical care; She had this experience a dedicated paramedic.

When the war led to 1856, Nightingale returned home permanently bedridden with chronic brucellosis, then called “Crimean fever.” However, that didn't stop her from spending the remaining of her life doing her own work to enhance health care Systems within the UK and other countries.

Heal with numbers

Statistics was a comparatively latest science in Nightingale's time, but consistent along with her early interest in mathematics. Ultimately Nightingale would come to consider that statistics used to cut back mortality rates were “the true measure of God’s purpose.”

Collaboration with William FarrNightingale, a number one figure in the appliance of statistics to epidemiology, analyzed extensive data on army mortality rates throughout the Crimean War and proved that almost all deaths resulted from preventable diseases fairly than battlefield injuries. She was particularly revolutionary in her use of graphical charts equivalent to her famous “Rose” or “Coxcomb” chart, and rightly believed that attractive visual representations were simpler than the dry tables of numbers favored by statisticians of the time.

As a result, Nightingale was admitted to the Royal Statistical Society in 1858 in recognition of her use of the statistical method in army health reform the organization's first female fellow. In 2020 the Royal Statistical Society established an annual edition Florence Nightingale Award for outstanding achievements in health and care analytics.

In a revolutionary move, Nightingale prolonged her statistical methods and data visualization to other areas, starting from hospital administration and health management to public sanitation reform and the causes of preventable diseases. These analyzes further uncovered the causes of each military and civilian mortality.

Training future nurses

In 1860, Nightingale founded nursing to make it each a science and an art First nursing school on this planet: the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital, London.

The students – 20 to 30 each – lived at the varsity and wore nurses' uniforms to finish rigorous courses in anatomy, surgical nursing, physiology, chemistry, hygiene and ethics. In the Eighties, Nightingale had done this accepted the newer “germ theory” the spread of disease and this became a part of the curriculum.

At the tip of the year-long program, Nightingale sent her nurses out into the world as certified and paid health care professionals.

By the turn of the century the varsity had graduated nearly 2,000 certified nurses. Known because the Nightingales, they spread across the UK to practice expert patient care, develop systems of care, teach, train and function mentors.

The Nightingale Training School became a pioneering model for nursing education across the UK. Similar schools could be established in Africa, America, Australia, Canada and other countries.

Nightingale too wrote a bestseller1859s”Care instructions“, which helped Victorian wives keep their relations healthy.

Advocating for public health

Nightingale's long, ultimately successful effort to bring trained nurses and midwives to England and Ireland notorious workhouses remained largely unnoticed.

During the Victorian period, sick poor people in workhouses could only be cared for by hand other destitute workhouse residents. Nightingale wrote quite a few articles emphasizing the necessity for public health nurses to look after the sick in these institutions and called for them within the 1860s Abolition of England's strict poor laws.

As a results of these efforts, workhouse nursing reforms step by step spread throughout England.

I consider that a fuller understanding of Nightingale's life and achievements, beyond the role of “Lady with the Lamp,” can provide an inspiring role model for those pursuing careers in nursing, medical science, and public health today ponder.