When it’s time to move a loved one into a nursing home, assisted living or similar long-term care facility, it can be difficult to know if you’re trusting the right people for the job. Your older family member may need a lot of round-the-clock, hands-on personal care that you can’t provide. You know that not just anyone is fit to take care of them, which may be causing you anxiety.
As you explore your options, you may need to look past the surface of a long-term care facility and instead look at some key factors that can tell you’re making the right choice, which could ease your mind into knowing your loved one is likely going to be safe from harm.
How do staff treat their clients?
You may be looking for a long-term care facility so that your older family member isn’t alone and has some kind of oversight concerning their health. When searching for the right long-term care facility, you will need to look into how the staff treat their residents. An indication that you found the right long-term care facility is that staff attend to clients as often as necessary and their clients are left happy and healthy (as best as they can be).
However, because of economic circumstances, some facilities don’t have enough staff to manage everyone in their care. There may be staff who don’t enjoy their line of work and are underpaid, which can cause them to be negligent or neglectful of their residents. When a client, such as your elderly loved one, is neglected, they may develop worsening health issues. They may even develop mental issues and change their demeanor because of how they’re being tested.
Taking matters into your own hands when seeking the right long-term care facility can be difficult. You may need to know your legal options if you find that a facility isn’t right for your loved one. And you will need to keep a close watch on how they’re being treated even if you find a facility that is seemingly perfect, simply because things aren’t always as they seem.