I worked at a facility were supplies were sparse. Why? Because the Nursing Home basically stiffed every supply company they ordered from. As a result, we only had one supplier, who would not deliver ANYTHING until the bill was paid in advance. This facility never had any money, and had new owners every 6 months. At the end of the year, I would get at least 2 W2's from the same employer!
Laundry never sent up enough towels and washcloths. There were never enough sheets and bed pads. We would have to determine whose bed was the dirtiest. Whoever had the dirtiest bed got a bed change. Needless to say, those who recieved showers, did not always have a crisp clean bed to sleep in afterwards. Speaking of showers, there were days that some of my residents could not get showers because there were not enough towels and washcloths to bath them with! By the time the clean linens arrived, the shift was already over. Those linens were intended for the next shift.
The administrator and DON would come down on us hard sometimes. Saying we were not cleaning the residents like we should. How could we? We had nothing to work with! The residents were greatful for what we could do-and voiced thier concerns during resident meetings. The problem was, Administration would come down on us, as if we were the one's responsible for the supplies. I can remember days where we had to tape two breifs together to fit one resident because they ran out of large breifs. This also created problems because #1-that is abuse and #2-residents often had accidents through the "too small" breifs creating an even bigger problem.
It is sad that residents pay hundreds of dollars a day to be somewhere and the facility didn't have adequate supplies to meet the demand.
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