You want your elderly loved one to be admitted to a reliable nursing home. This guarantees you that they will be well taken care of. But how do you choose the right nursing home?
Here are four questions to ask:
Can you tell me more about the facility?
With this question, you should obtain adequate information regarding the facility’s accreditation, its size, the number of residents, the facility’s management, any improvements done, visitation hours and how residents can contact loved ones.
How is your staffing?
Understaffing is a major concern in nursing homes. Thus, you should know if the nursing home you want to choose has enough staff members, from nurses to housekeepers.
Details to obtain include the nurse-to-resident ratio, the number of housekeepers, the annual rate of staff turnover (percentage of employees who leave the facility yearly), what they have done to improve turnover and how they recruit staff members.
How are the rooms cleaned?
Since your loved one will spend most of the time in their room, you should know how often the facility cleans its rooms, the size of the rooms, how sufficient the storage is in the rooms, if the rooms are shared and if a resident can personalize their living space.
What about the outdoor space?
It’s beneficial for elders to be outdoors – it benefits them physically and mentally. But to gain these benefits they need to be in a clean and calm environment. Therefore, you should ask the facility about its outdoor space. Is there a patio? Is there a garden where residents can plant flowers or take walks? and so on.
These are a few questions to ask nursing homes, but there are more. However, despite doing in-depth research, your loved one may still be neglected/abused in your chosen nursing home. If this happens, get legal help to protect their rights.
