According to B.C.’s Seniors Advocate there is a fine line between doing what’s best for someone and infringing on someone’s civil liberties.
Isobel Mackenzie has found that line is crossed in the wrong direction too often with the elderly.
“We’re very good if what you want happens to coincide with what we think is good for you, we, the clinical care community, the community I come from, we’re very good at that,” said Mackenzie who has over 20 years experience working with seniors in home care, community and volunteer services. “We are not very good when you want something that we don’t think is good for you.”
That will be one of the issues she will be talking about at her town hall meetings this week in the Okanagan, which includes April 22, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Shatford Centre.
In her recent report, she indicated as many as 15 per cent of seniors in this province could have more independence with assisted living or community care support.
“If we are filling even five per cent of these scarce beds with folks who could live independently, that is 1,500 beds that could open up province-wide,” said Mackenzie
She recalled a couple wrongly kept against their will at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital.
“The guy in Victoria had a cognitive score of 25 out of 30. Mine was 27,” she said. “He was absolutely competent, but they didn’t like what he was doing, he was neglecting himself, but yeah, he was entitled to do that.
“My test would be, okay if they were 45 (years old) with that score would you section (commit) them and usually the answer is no.”
She believes the score, not the age, should be the determining factor in whether or not a person is detained in a care facility.
She feels determining whether the case is a matter of neglect, which can be remedied or self neglect which is a personal choice.
Mackenzie noted it is not her job to say what is right or wrong, but to make sure seniors wishes are respected.
Seniors’ care facilities are also on the top of MacKenzie’s agenda including issues such as staffing ratio per client, drug administration as well as, emotional and physical therapy.
She also feels some significant form of action should be taken against chronic offenders who have repeated licence infractions.
“Presumably you want to have some form of graduated system. Right now there are only two ends, you’re open, operating with infractions or you’re closed,” said Mackenzie. “We need an intermediate model here that’s a little bit sharper than you’re written up and it’s posted on a website and you don’t look good.”
Care home investigation and licensing procedures are other areas she feels my need to be addressed.
“At the end of the day what I want to see is not the system that determines what is good quality of care, but the resident,” said Mackenzie. “I think we do a lot of things we think are good but not only are they not appreciated by the residents they actually diminish the quality of life.
“We’re strapping them into wheelchairs so they don’t fall, we’ve sucked all the taste out of their diet because we’re making it nutritional or we have over medicated them because every time something comes up we’re finding a pill to fix it.
“These are all things we need to look at very closely.”
