Mrs. Davidson from the memory care floor wouldn’t sit down. The caregiver raised her voice and attracted the attention of the medication aide in the hallway. As the aide rounded the corner, the caregiver grabbed the disobedient resident and shoved her into the chair. The angry caregiver stormed out of the room. Mrs. Davidson didn’t seem hurt, so the aide helped her to her feet and into bed. The aide then went to the office of the Executive Director who called the caregiver to her office. The Executive Director confronted the caregiver—who confessed. She was fired on-the-spot and escorted from the building.
This incident—rare as it might be—triggered the company’s procedures for dealing with a violent incident or inappropriate staff behavior. In this case, after firing the employee, the Executive Director took the resident to the hospital and called her family. She reported the incident to her regional director, and started the paperwork to report the incident to the state. Over the next few days, there was a company-wide review of their policies, procedures, and hiring practices, praise for the quick action of the medication aide, and meetings with employees to reinforce their company-wide zero tolerance policy.
A review of the caregiver’s record showed that she had no criminal background or evidence of being fired from previous jobs. She had passed the personality inventory given to each new employee, and she professed to “love old people” in her interview. The employee had either slipped through all the preventive screening—or had “lost it” this one time. In either case, the company exercised its zero tolerance policy and the employee is not likely to work in the senior living business again.
Irrespective of state law that may not even require criminal background checks or the ageism that pervades our culture and leads to elder abuse, professionally managed senior living communities (and company members of ALFA) minimize their risk to almost nothing by employing a zero tolerance policy and enforcing it with vigor and with no exceptions.
Elder abuse is far more pervasive in settings other than senior living communities and can take on many forms. Elder abuse can include simple neglect—the senior alone at home–who can’t take care of herself; emotional abuse—the senior who is ridiculed or blamed for problems in the family; financial abuse—the senior who gets billed for services not performed or is manipulated into changing a will.
While they can’t protect the senior from all these forms of abuse, a senior is far more likely to feel safe—and to be safe—in a professionally managed senior living community. Senior living communities embrace values that provide an antidote for abuse and ageism: choice, independence, dignity, and quality of life. A senior is far, far less vulnerable to abuse when he or she moves to a professionally managed senior living community with these values and zero tolerance.
Zero Tolerance: An Antidote to Elder Abuse was published in the January/February 2011 edition of the Assisted Living Executive. To read more Top of Mind and Assisted Living Executive articles, please visit http://alfapublications.org.
