Volunteer to help a long-distance caregiver
People like Patrick Cannan step up to assess conditions for seniors.
By Tammy I. Glenn
My mom-in-law fell again this month. She’s back in rehab now. Mom is in Palm Beach County and I’m in Southern California. We don’t have enough frequent flier miles to hop on a plane every time this happens.
With the help of the discharge planner at the hospital, we selected one of the top-rated rehab facilities in the area. Mom was doing well, and walking, but not quite stable enough to go home. The rehab we chose was a bit farther from her home, and since she is down to a handful of friends in the area, we went for quality of care over convenience.
At least this time, the hospital discharge planner let us know the name of the place where Mom was moving. Last time, I had to track her down.
Still, none of these incidents seems to come without frustration — and that’s true for those of us who work in senior services.
The phone in Mom’s room rang six times before disconnecting, not long enough for her to answer it given her limited mobility.
When I did reach her, she reported that she wasn’t receiving certain pain medication even though her doctor prescribed it.
Every manager or nurse I tried to reach had a voicemail with no greeting.
Over a week and a half, only the physical therapist called me back.
By Day 3, Mom’s roommate visited and let me know that Mom fell trying to get to the bathroom. She was now in diapers in a wheelchair with no physical therapy scheduled.
If you want to irk my mom-in-law, give her the same chicken dinner seven times in a row.
To top it off, she had an old bandage on her shin that should have been changed a week ago. It was now infected — and that’s dangerous for anybody, especially a 90-year-old.
By Day 3, I was losing my mind. By Day 5, I was looking at the first flight out of Los Angeles. The morning of Day 6, I called the Florida office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman.
Within 24 hours, Volunteer Ombudsman Patrick Cannan was assigned to the case and on his way to assess the situation in person.
The federally mandated Long-Term Ombudsman program is one of our most effective government programs. Take it from a fellow taxpayer, these are your dollars at work. With a (too-small) budget to staff and coordinate a small battalion of volunteers, people like Cannan are trained on what to look for in nursing homes. Rehab is a section for temporary stays at a nursing home/assisted living facility.
This is a volunteer role that many of us can be trained to do.
“I’m not a medical professional,” said the 83-year-old Cannan, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, “but, I’m a good advocate and I’ve learned how much of an impact I can have by knowing the rights of the residents, what they should expect and who I need to talk to."
By the afternoon of Day 7, Cannan had turned around the entire experience for our family. He had a face-to-face conversation with the director of nursing.
“After speaking with Tammy’s mom directly, I had her permission to advocate. Then, I just went down the list of concerns,” Cannan said. “It’s not rocket science. It’s tenacity.”
The national Long-Term Ombudsman programs need volunteers — and for that matter — so does the National Volunteer Caregiving Network. Here are two volunteer opportunities that not only allow you to pay it forward, they will arm you with information and experience so that you are more prepared to advocate for yourself when the time comes.
What should have been a one-week stay was close to three weeks, but I shudder to think how this situation might have unfolded without Patrick Cannan. My stress level was over the top and within hours of him stepping in, my family and most importantly, my mom-in-law, started to feel so much better.
Our goal in volunteer caregiving is to help people age in place with dignity. The Long-Term Ombudsman’s goal is to ensure our safety when we can’t live at home. Neither of our organizations can do this without volunteers.
For more information on your local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, visit ElderCare.acl.gov or call (800) 677-1116.
Tammy I. Glenn is the executive director of the National Volunteer Caregiving Network. In 1984, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began providing seed money for volunteer caregiving and its initial grants pioneered the model that eventually scaled to serve the entire United States through more than 1,000 organizations. Forty years later, this national model continues to thrive.
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