Long-Term Care Ethics

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the hotly debated issue of the ethics involved in long-term care. The paper reports that despite the law that the nursing facility must have sufficient nursing staff to provide nursing and related services to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being of each resident, as determined by resident assessments and individual plans of care, abuse is commonplace.

From the Paper:

"Just like daycare services the states are left to regulate the number of nursing aides (working toward their CNA certification a process that takes only 75 hours of class and clinical time much of which they fulfill while working, a short written exam and short clinical exam) or CNAs (who have fulfilled the brief qualifications and been registered with the state as CNAs) who must be present to provide care to the population of the facility. The federal regulations rely on a system of reviewing all patient care plans and determining the number based on this, though the states often regulate further determining a number of patient, depending on level of care, per aide per shift (often with a shift differential where the daytime shifts when people are needing to be more active have more aids working) Yet, the numbers are minimalist and often skilled nursing services will report being understaffed. (Eric Bates, 1999, p. 11)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Collopy, Bart, Philip Boyle, and Bruce Jennings. "New Directions in Nursing Home Ethics." The Hastings Center Report 21.2 (1991): 1+.
• Eric Bates. "The Shame of Our Nursing Homes." The Nation 29 Mar. 1999: 11.
• Long, Alex B. "Addressing the Cloud over Employee References: A Survey of Recently Enacted State Legislation." William and Mary Law Review 39.1 (1997): 177-228.
• Osgood, Nancy J., Barbara A. Brant, and Aaron Lipman. Suicide among the Elderly in Long-Term Care Facilities. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
• Rivlin, Alice M., Joshua M. Wiener, Raymond J. Hanley, and Denise A. Spence. Caring for the Disabled Elderly: Who Will Pay?. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1988.

More papers on Long-Term Care Ethics:

• Essay # 13707 : "Long-Term Care for Elderly"
• Research Proposal # 107113 : "Palliative Care"
• Essay # 60275 : "Ethics"

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