Caring Currents

The once-common nursing home practice of using bed rails, belts, and vests to physically restrain residents has declined by nearly 40% in recent years, according to a national study.

The dip was due in no small part to changes in federal law about a decade ago that made it illegal for nursing homes to use restraints to discipline residents or simply because of convenience. Restraints -- which evidence showed caught, trapped, or strangled hundreds of frail and elderly patients -- may now be legally used only for safety or for medical reasons, such as preventing a resident from removing an IV.

The most recent figures show that 5.9% of nursing home patients nationwide were restrained for such reasons. Restraints were used most frequently in California (13.4%) and least often in Nebraska (1.3%). While the overall improvement is heartening, slippage and abuses in the viscerally offensive practice still remain -- often unseen and unsupervised behind closed doors...  Read more

In what is already a politically heated election, Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian is again fueling the fires of controversy by announcing plans to run for Congress in Michigan's 9th District.

Kevorkian ignited controversy in the 1980s by steadfastly asserting his belief that physician-assisted suicide is sometimes the best form of medical care. Then, in 1998, Kevorkian audaciously starred in a 60 Minutes broadcast administering a lethal injection to a patient suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease who had asked for his help in dying. Kevorkian was convicted of homicide for that act and released after serving the minimum eight years in prison, earning time off for good behavior.

Kevorkian's political platform has only one plank: that the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution basically allows an individual to do anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. And in that, he includes assisting a terminally ill patient with suicide...  Read more

"Caring for Your Parents," a PBS documentary about doing just that, promises to give an unsugarcoated look at the challenges and tensions adult children face as caregivers.

 The first 90 minutes of the show chronicle the experiences of five families from varying cultural and economic backgrounds, training a lens on tough topics including:

• struggles to move a parent or provide care at home
• stresses on caregivers' marriages, and
• costs involved in providing personal and medical care.  

According to Michael Kirk, who wrote, produced, and directed the documentary, its most poignant moments are those in which emotions run highest as parents and caregivers alike confront: the need to stop driving, loss of independence, and medical professionals with less-than-helpful bedside manners.

But viewers aren't left to tune out in despair...  Read more

Home Instead, an international franchise offering services to help seniors live and age at home, recently released a guide aimed directly at something we don't want to talk about: Why we can't talk to our aging parents about their tough end-of-life issues.

It's quaintly dubbed the 40/70 Rule--a warning that once you reach age 40 and your parents turn 70, like it or not, it's time to have those tough talks about their finances, health, ability to age at home, and wishes for final arrangements. Even if those ships have sailed, agewise, you can get an immediate assessment of your "conversational relationship" with your parents by taking a 15-question test. A summary of your situation arrives soon after you press the button recording your answers.

The quiz isn't as hokey as it might sound. And for many of us, it's a mind-opener. Maybe dad's not confiding his fears about not having enough money because you threatened to take over his checkbook last time he paid the credit card bill late...  Read more