nursing

Two weeks after the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was identified in Snohomish County, Washington, in early 2020, my dad had a stroke at his home just across Puget Sound. More COVID-19 cases were about to surface at a nearby skilled nursing facility, marking the beginning of a crisis for nursing homes across the country. My dad was incredibly lucky. It was minor stroke, and he didn’t need nursing home care. But the type of stroke he had is a leading risk factor for cognitive impairment and vascular dementia. I know that nursing care may be in his future. Throughout the pandemic, nursing homes have been in the headlines as places with uncontrolled COVID-19 cases and social isolation, which research shows can worsen people’s health. About a third of all reported U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been...

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated America’s nursing homes, but the reasons aren’t as simple as people might think. To understand how nursing homes became the source of over one-third of U.S. COVID-19 deaths, you have to look beyond just the vulnerability of the residents and examine how nursing homes pay and manage their employees. The average nursing aide earns just $14.25 an hour, less than $30,000 a year. Many are women who work at multiple nursing homes to make ends meet. Partly as a result of that, the typical nursing home has staff connections to 15 other facilities – each an opportunity for the coronavirus to spread. That risk is magnified by a reluctance among many nursing aides to take sick days when they are ill, even though federal law currently requires employers to provid...

Tag: nursing

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