Making Long-Term Care Safer

The aftermath, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

A privately owned nursing home in Hsinbei City caught on fire, toward this tragedy, I really don’t want to say anything harsh.

The long-term care center that had the fire this time was located on the eighth floor, it is, hard enough, for someone on that high a floor to be rescued, let alone when the residents are all immobilized elderly.  From the news station footages, some of the intubated, bedridden elderly should be placed in hospices, but instead, they were, in a nursing home.  And, maybe there are those out there who don’t know the differences of the two.  Those in hospices are those who needed around the clock medical care, and in the nursing homes, those who are still mobile and the caretakers of these places are mostly social workers and attendees, and, some of the facilities, to make life easier on the families, combined the two.

And, why would a nursing home be stationed at such a high floor of a building?  Other than having NO floor restrictions, it is, very difficult, to set up a nursing home in the community, because the local residents would fight for the nursing homes to be elsewhere.

In the cities, these nursing home all head up into the skies, or that the families drive their elders to the suburbs and find a home there, although having care in the community is vouched on but, there are, rarely, any success stories.

The high floors nursing homes feared fires the most, and for those nursing homes in the distant areas, they’d feared the floods, for instance the typhoon that impacted the elderly care home in Chiayi, or the typhoon that caused damages in the nursing home in Kaohsiung in 2010.  Whether if it’s located in the lower or higher up places, “safety first” should always BE the primary considerations, and, aging gracefully in Hsinbei City had, shown the problems of the fires, and, in the voices that discussed, debated the matter, I believe, that we should look from a broader perspective, from a wider angle, to find a proper way to take care of the elderly in the populations.

So, there are the pros and the cons, in the cities, there’s little space, and naturally, the nursing homes would have to be located in the higher up floors, and, that would cause problems if there was a fire like the recent case, and, in the suburbs, sure, there would be bigger spaces, more land, but, at the same time, the living conveniences are, reduced, and, it is, very difficult, to balance between the two, so the elderly receive the proper kind of care that’s safe and won’t cause them to lose their lives.