3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

What an odd thought! No, that is only for people on suicide watch who are unsupervised. Or for people in jail. Geez, if we took away the belts of everyone who lives in a mental health facility we would get abuse or neglect charges for letting peoples' hind ends show! 8`-)

Mattie,

First of all, you need to understand what those stats mean. What they mean is whether a facility has followed every single state and federal regulation to the letter. If you have a chance to read through the hundreds of pages of regulations an agency is supposed to follow you will find that this is pretty much an impossibility, and what your survey teams will tell you is that this is what the ideals are, rather than what they believe can always happen on a consistent basis. If every one of us in our own homes were held to the same standards we would have as bad or worse a rate. In truth, and as someone who does mock surveys on a monthly basis, if your survey teams surveyed to the absolute literal letter the rate would always be 100%.

Pull up a set of regs at some point and see what is being surveyed before you get too excitable about what those numbers mean. Neglect can be alleged if the person who does the monthly or quarterly paperwork reviews does not get their paperwork completed on time. It can be alleged if a person misses a single dose of medication or the medication is given 2 minutes past a particular window of time, whether or not it is an "important" medication or whether any negative condition occurs as a result of this action or inaction. It can be alleged if meals are given 10 minutes late, even if the person was at another activity or the stove breaks. It can be alleged if the water temperature is 1 degree above the prescribed range, whether or not anyone is taking a bath or shower. I have been an agencies where these specific "neglect" allegations have been made by a survey team. In each case they were technically correct citations, but they did not result in anyone being harmed.

The standards are incredibly tough, and for a good reason, but as I said above, I doubt there is anyone I personally know who could follow them in their own home on a consistent basis. You have to set tough guidelines so people know what "should" happen. If someone comes to your house unexpectedly and wants to make sure that you gave your children their dinner no more than a specified number of hours after the last one or whether you had a scald guard on every one of your water taps or whether every single bottle of cleaning material was secured and unreachable or every single thing you put in your refrigerator was signed, sealed, and dated, I am guessing you might not have a perfect record either.

The flip side is that if you are going to ask for standards to be set this high you are supposed to fund an agency so that they can carry out these standards. Federal and state regulators have a tendency to set high standards, as they should, and then legislatures have a tendency NOT to fund the agencies so they can carry these standards out.

So just because an agency has a neglect allegation does not mean that they are also being abusive, and it most certainly does not mean that one should jump to the conclusion that therefore everyone who ever lived in a facility was strapped into a chair. That is a leap across a chasm taking two jumps to get there.

Thanks, Jane! It's easier to see more of the picture if you've actually walked the walk, isn't it?

Bless you!

Maybe next holiday season you can remember to attach a nice big seasonal bow to the bags. ;-)

Puddleboy, I am more of the impression that someone never quite left childhood. ;-)

Bill, my friend, I pity you. What a mess! 8`-)

I was just looking back at one of the sites I referenced earlier:

http://www.scooterlink...&catagory_id=627

You'll notice that it says that the emesis basins they sell are "autoclavable." That's the autoclave that Motts shows in some of his other pix:

http://www.opacity.us/image270.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image562.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image731.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image1153.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image1690.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image1980.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image1983.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image2043.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image2208.htm
http://www.opacity.us/image2718.htm

The idea being that rather than having to replace your equipment after it is used, you can save money by purchasing items that can be sterilized and re-sterilized via an autoclave. Obviously, if your autoclave is not working well it cannot properly sterilize your equipment. The initial cost of the autoclaves, the fact that they use energy, the fact that you have to take time to sterilize the equipment (with its concomitant paperwork to assure you have done this correctly for infection control issues), etc., etc., sometimes makes it more economical to purchase plastic and paper items that can be easily thrown away when you are finished using them. And, of course, no one ever even thinks that their own personal shiny stainless steel sterile-looking emesis pan may have been used by someone else previously. ;-)

We do, indeed, love you, our friend Ed from Oregon! :-)

Goodness, if we are going to pretend we read Skinner we must admit that he was usually contrasting positive reinforcement with punishment, as opposed to negative reinforcement. They are not the same thing.

WAWAWAWA!!!! One of my favorite episodes. 8`-)

Wanda, I oughts to hug you, 'cept people would assume that restraint was being involved. ;-)

As someone who works every day with folks with severe disabilities, I must say people are projecting their own issues onto this picture. Personally I am always thankful to find a picture that includes a person who uses a wheelchair to get around, and I find it frankly bizarre that someone would assume this means the child who uses the wheelchair is getting left behind when in fact this is a picture of inclusion, something you most certainly do not see very often out in the "normal world" that everyone thinks is so very marvy and so non-restrictive. In the "real world" folks with handicaps get ignored for the most part and aren't even IN most pictures.

Guess if it's a picture in an institution it must automatically be evil, since all institutions are evil. Black and white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Everything or nothing. Hang-dang those shades of gray because they make people think through the issues, and that seems to be a lot to ask.

That's the damned orb of Radical Ed's beer again. It's always escaping and getting into the pictures. >:-(

Looks like we need a few of them there emesis basins. ;-)

Kind of like my office door. :-(

Oh, for heaven's sake.