The government are setting up new standards for carers who look after the elderly and ensuring that they all have minimum training. This is due to a questionable quality of care given by some individuals. It is believed if there was more safe guarding on the qualification of care assistants we could be more confident that more carers would do the job properly. The government had proposed to set up compulsory registration for healthcare assistants however, Mr Lansley reported that is couldn't be justified in our current economic climate.
This article is particularly interesting to me, as I am currently working as a carer in a nursing home. Despite being paid minimum wage to do a difficult and demanding job, I can say from the heart that I get a genuine 'buzz' from making a personal difference to the patients' lives. Also I can go home after my 12 hour shift knowing that as a team we have done our best to cater for their personal needs. These horrific stories of poor quality care really do shock me, it makes you wonder why they are working within healthcare!? Setting up a code of conduct will hopefully ensure that other homes across the country can provide decent care for those who need it most.
Due to all these nightmare stories in the media about abuse and neglect of the elderly, I often feel some of the relatives do not respect the carers. This is made more complicated when you have residents with dementia. For example, one lady told her daughter that she hadn't had anything to eat all day, literally minutes after I had finished feeding her a roast dinner. It makes us look disgraceful, especially when we have to try and justify ourselves.
There is another muddled lady who asks for the toilet every 10-15 minutes, even after we have just taken her. We take her regularly throughout the day, however it is certainly not every 10 minutes as this would mean neglecting the needs of the other clients if we focused all our time in her (plus you cannot physically pass waste every 10 minutes- unless you had a medical problem). When visitors come into the lounge and hear her ask for the toilet, it looks incredibly bad on our behalf when we don't take her. I feel that the bad publicity that carers are getting nationally is affecting the trust people have in care assistants. It sometimes feels like there is a huge generalisation and that we are being punished for the sins of those people who abuse the gift of being able to help someone who needs it.
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