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Waking, Showering And Dressing Aged Care Residents At 6am – Does It Have To Be So Early?
Ensuring safe nurse-to-resident ratios in Aged Care will make a huge difference to the lives of many nurses, residents and their families. Tell us your aged care story here.
The following question was posted in Ask Judith in the LAMP a few years ago and we thought it’s an important issue worth readdressing. Nurses are being told to have residents showered and drressed at 6am, but many of the residents prefer not to get up this early. Have you had a similar predicament in your workplace?
Question: Surely aged care residents have rights? I am an RN in a nursing home where we have two starting times for day shift: 6am and 7am. The DoN has told me I am to direct employees who start at 6am to get residents out of bed, showered and in chairs. While there are a couple of residents who like to get up early, the majority are not happy to be woken and showered at this time, and the nursing staff feel terrible doing this. Should this be happening? I thought the residents had rights.
Answer: Yes, you are correct. The residents do have rights. Under the Charter of Residents Rights and Responsibilities, each resident of a residential care service (which includes an aged care home) has the right to be treated and accepted as an individual and to have his or her individual preferences taken into account and treated with respect.
Update on Nurse Uncut from February 2016.
Do you work in aged care? What would you do if your manager told you to get the residents up and ready before they wanted to? Email us on nurseuncut@nswnma.asn.au
I work at a lovely nursing home called Sheridan. We do not do this, we do not wake sleeping residents ever. The facility is their home and their own waking time is for them to decide.
Yes this happens all the time. Most residents are forced to wake and shower and dress at 6:30 am then left sitting in a chair until 8 for breakfast to be served,the only reason for this is the nurse to residents ratios! 4 nurses can not get 36 elderly, none mobile residents up, showed and dressed before 8! If we get then up later. Change up the shifts a bit, start each shift an hour later that way the residents are not forced out of or into bed at ridiculous times! Oh and put in more staff!!!
I start at 6.15 with another staff member most mornings I do not like waking residents up but yet We have to have three showers done on each side every shift if they are not done I get into big trouble not only by management but other staff member that start at 7.00 we have shower a list every day which get changed now and then by staff not telling others
This happens at our nursing home. In fact we are directed by our CTM to have night shift do two sling lifters in the morning to help day staff out. This is a dangerous and careless decision made by our CTM and is continuing as i speak. Today for example we will get up a resident at 5.am (he does not mind this as he likes to rise early) however we wake out next resident up at 5.30am. He has no say and we don’t ask anymore because our directions are clear. “get the showers done”. We have asked numerous times to have this changed but it falls on deaf ears. The other thing is that they have now put dementia residents in our high care unit so now when we do our two sling lifter showers in the morning there is no-one manning the floor and our dementia residents are left unsupervised and walking up and down the hallways and into other residents bedrooms. They are high falls risks and they do fall. Again it falls on deaf ears. It’s not about care any more it’s about the money and it shows.
I do country / remote agency nursing. I am currently at a wheatbelt hospital with 6 permanent residents. Morning staff are getting a bit peeved at us nightstaff for not having 4 residents done by 7. The residents are mostly 2 person showers. No other hospital the we as agency nurses does this. One or two residents…yes, but having to start at 5 am is against my grain…
Is this legal?
I have worked in nursing homes where the early were showered at 4.30 in the morning. Fortunately it is not that early now. In the last nursing home, we were getting people out of bed for a shower at 6am I would do at less four before breakfast and another 6 after breakfast. These patients are left sitting up most of the day. Taken to the toilet when staff are able, due to limited staffing. In the morning 2 nurses would have 14 to 15 patients. Requiring, Wash, dress,shower, toilet, dressings, walking patients, attending to request of relatives. People who work with the aged, never stop, there are people with challenging behaviours, who also make the work more challenging.
Although I did not give out the medications. We still were going all day. Feeding of patients, would take an hour, them there is morning tea, and afternoon tea. Many missing there refreshments, because of the lack of staff
Yep, sounds familiar. Ours are not necessarily showered, but the AM RN will come in at 6am (well before their shift starts) and wake them up for S8 medications (charted for 0800, not 0600!). There is an RN on night duty who is perfectly capable of doing the 0600 meds, which are very few. Of course, then some residents don’t take the pill and they are called resistive or “have trouble swallowing”. I wouldn’t want to be woken and have a pill shoved down my throat either! I am ridiculed because I refuse to come in earlier than my rostered start time. I don’t work for free, and residents should not be expected to be woken early either.