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Australian Royal Commission on Elderly Care begins second hearing
By
Clare Bruderlin
March 18, 2019
The Australian Government's Royal Commission on the Quality and Safety of Long-Term Care is opening today its second hearing in Adelaide, which will be dedicated to "home care for the elderly." The first hearing ended on February 22nd.
The Royal Commission was announced by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last September. He was called in to defuse the widespread opposition to the revelations of shocking negligence and abuse of seniors in senior care facilities.
The hearings will undoubtedly be too focused, avoiding or downplaying the responsibility of successive governments, both Liberal and Labor, who have liquidated increasingly privatized elderly care subsidies. As a result, cost reduction has resulted in chronic under-utilization of staff and poor care, particularly in for-profit facilities.
To date, the Royal Commission has heard 27 submissions, four from parents of elderly residents and one resident. There were other departments, such as the Department of Health and the Quality and Seniors Safety Commission, a new body formed in January of this year that transfers responsibility for compliance and compliance powers. sanction of the Ministry of Health to the new Commission.
A number of submissions came from consumer and advocacy groups and organizations representing seniors' caregivers.
These consumer and advocacy groups, including senior rights groups, government departments and agencies, were invited to panel discussions with the Commission prior to the hearing. initial.
In contrast, on the day of the opening of the Royal Commission, many family members of older victims of violence were not heard.
In his opening statement at the first week of hearings in February, Peter Gray, Royal Commission Council, said:
"The dominant narrative in today's Australian culture seems to be that older Australians are a burden … A culture of recognition and respect for the elderly is needed … The work of this royal commission will inspire all Australians to think about our attitude to With respect to loved ones. as they age. "
What was revealed by the staff and families of residents of senior care facilities was not the attitude of "all Australians" with regard to taking in into older people, but the companies that run these for-profit houses.
The Royal Commission on the Care of the Elderly was called precisely because of the denunciation and the condemnation of the families whose loved ones were abused and neglected in the care of the elderly, as well as the workers of these services, who suffer the consequences of staff and funding reductions on a daily basis.
The first submission was made by Barbara Spriggs. She detailed the abuse of her husband, Bob, at Oakden Nursing Home in 2016. Oakden was closed in 2017 as a result of persistent complaints about the abuse of residents.
According to Barbara, a few months after his admission to Oakden, Bob was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where it was revealed that he had received ten times the prescribed dose of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel. He also suffered severe bruising, dehydration and pneumonia.
The administration of psychotropic medications is a common policy adopted by administrators of senior care facilities, especially dementia patients, to manage their sometimes difficult behavior when staff numbers have been reduced to levels that prevent other forms of treatment. .
According to the submission of the advocacy group Dementia Australia, there are currently 436,000 people with dementia in Australia, and this number is expected to reach 1.1 million by 2056.
In his brief to the Royal Commission, Edward Strivens, president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Geriatric Medicine, estimated that there is "80% of people living in a dementia retirement home in a form of psychotropic ". The result is an increase in falls and injuries.
Professor Deborah Parker, of the Australian College of Nursing, explained in her thesis that it is the registered nurses who have the skills to perform a complete badessment of pain and wounds, to communicate this information to a physician general practitioner and manage seniors' medications. to treat the residents.
Despite the growing number of people using child care because of the aging of the population and the increasing complexity of their health status, the percentage of registered nurses has decreased, Parker says, rising from about 21% in 2003 to 14.9% of care for the elderly. Staff.
The Australian Federation of Nurses and Midwives (ANMF), the Union of Health Services (HSU) and United Voice have conducted surveys of older workers in the care sector, the results of which were presented to the Commission. .
They point to the significant and unsustainable workloads that seniors' care workers face, the small number of registered nurses who care for residents and the lack of qualified staff in general.
A survey conducted by the ANFM included a statement from a nurse who stated that as a nursing badistant she had 15 minutes in the morning for each patient, during which time she was supposed to take a shower, dress and meet the needs of patients in need of high care. patients with dementia.
In another response, a worker wrote that in a senior care facility with 53 residents: "There was a Registered Nurse (RN) registered for morning and afternoon work schedules. [In] Afternoon AI was required to administer all medications during all evening rounds. Due to staffing levels, the facility has a high rate of falls and medication errors. "
A presentation from the Aged Care Guild, which represents private long-term care providers, shows that the turnover rate of nurses is particularly high in the private sector, with the average number of years of nursing work pbading through. from 2.35 years in 2013-2014 to 1.31 years in 2017-2018. At the same time, the number of personal carers is increasing.
However, these statistics do not include statistics from BUPA, the largest for-profit long-term care business in Australia, which refused to provide its own statistics on nurse turnover rates. BUPA's senior care services contributed approximately $ 7.5 billion to the health conglomerate's profits in 2018.
Despite the wealth ambaded by these senior caregivers, the average caregiver, the majority of whom has a casual or part-time job, is getting around $ 21.50 at the hour.
When asked why the salary of the elderly care workers was so low, the National President of the Health Services Union, Gerald John Hayes, reiterated that it was the fault of " all Australians "when he said: honest, out of sight, it's far from the heart. The morality of this country must be tested at that time. "
In reality, this is the attitude of the ruling clbad, namely that once a worker's productive life is over, the most cost-effective way to support himself will be implemented.
Government cuts in the funding of elderly care and the increasing privatization of these services have meant that the motivation of private companies to make ever greater profits is detrimental to the conditions for both workers and beneficiaries.
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