Each time you do observe the staff, you find that they have fallen into a reactive mode, attending to the people in their care only when problems arise and failing to notice them when they're calm. You wish you had more staff, but you know you'll be lucky just to keep the ones you have. Imagine if every caregiver had a personal reminder, like a whisper in their ears, to teach them to recognize and reward the calm. Imagine also that documentation of difficult behavior is reliable and accurate all day long, every day of the year. This number continues to grow at a rapid rate.
Many nursing homes are poorly staffed and unable to meet the emotional needs of our seniors.
Most older individuals at one time or another had been an important and necessary part of a family, a business, or a group of close friends. Even in the best of nursing homes, people can loose their individuality and get lost in the crowd. If only ten percent of all nursing home residents are unable to handle such a change in their lives and persistently seek attention for minor or imagined aches and pains simply because they are lonely, this would still be 150,000 seniors living out the rest of their lives in a state of loneliness and deprivation of the recognition they deserve. For some, the behaviors grow out of control when those consequences are removed. Others grow up and pass the punishment tradition on, either as parents, teachers, employers, school board members, government leaders or other.