Duncan – I am so glad that Abi, a dedicated RN, was brave enough to risk coming forth with some details about conditions in our CDH.
I hope she bears no repercussions for her honesty.
As someone with a senior parent that had the misfortune to be involved with medical system the last seven years of her life I can only concur with her.
It took me a full two years after my mother’s death to recover enough composure to be able to meet with the CDH head of nursing to discuss issues that caused her unexpected death. I was assured at the time that they were aware of many shortfalls and things were changing, but apparently over a year later they are changing in the wrong direction!
Lack of facilities, poor communication between patient, staff and doctors, and understaffing on the ground level are a few challenges.
Many of the CDH senior problems are exacerbated by an inefficient home care system which does not help prevent so many seniors ending up in a hospital ill equipped to handle them.
This is another system with a top heavy bureaucratic web too complicated to enable one to speak to the same person twice; the ball of responsibility just gets passed back and forth. Lack of proper care in VIHA homecare, and regulations tying their hands, is causing many people to go to emergency for non-sensical problems. A senior cannot even get their blood pressure taken at Makola, the new stateof-the-art senior care facility. A resident needs to make a doctor appointment for this!
The senior issue is only going to worsen, with current Harperism politics, especially in another decade when we are all there. Let’s not spend a few million or billion more dollars on a study to determine the challenges and get public input. Haven’t billions been spent already on these? We know what the problem is!
Lorene Benoit
Duncan
