Long-term care
This content originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2020 issue (PDF) of The Washington Nurse magazine.
Long-term care is a growing field in nursing, and the challenges are growing alongside the demand. Our original goal in this issue of The Washington Nurse Magazine was to examine the challenges facing long-term care, explore a vision for what it can be and celebrate the contributions of the thousands of Washington nurses who are the backbone of the long-term care system.
Since Life Care Center in Kirkland became Ground Zero for coronavirus in the United States, the pandemic has exposed many of the significant, systemic challenges facing this critical system.
According to the New York Times, residents and staff at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities accounted for one-third of all coronavirus deaths in the United States as of May 11, 2020. Across 7,700 facilities, tests have confirmed over 153,000 cases, with many more doubtless unconfirmed. Long-term care facilities are prime vectors for contagious disease, and the elderly and medically fragile patients in these settings are at extremely high risk.
The crisis poses another set of challenges for those providing in-home care and the families who rely on them. Families and nurses alike must balance the risk of infection against the needs of patients in in-home care settings — a choice made all the more difficult by the medically fragile nature of the patients in need and limited personal protective equipment for caregivers.
The pandemic may cast a new light on the issue, but long-term care has been too-often overlooked by policy makers in the United States for years. Like our entire health care system, the demands created by a for-profit system put nurses in an impossible position all too often, and caregivers are consistently stretched thin and under-resourced as they care for those with long-term needs.
Meanwhile, nurses whose work is supported by public funding are often under-compensated, with few or no benefits and little institutional support for their critical work.
When we have contained this pandemic, we must all continue the work to support and advocate for the nurses who work in long-term care to receive the support and resources to care for themselves and the patients they serve.
