Columnist Susan Snyder: Nursing assistants need help

Sunday, April 16, 2000 | 10:45 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Beth says people might be amazed by what she and her peers provide for less than $10 an hour.

Beth, who asked that her real name be withheld, is one of Nevada's 5,021 certified nursing assistants.

They help nursing home residents perform the most intimate of tasks -- bathing, dressing, using the bathroom. They change wet undergarments. They roll patients over to prevent bedsores. They try to comfort and console.

And they do it for somewhere around $7.75 an hour. A secretary makes more.

"We're underpaid and overworked," said Beth, who works in a Las Vegas-area assisted living facility. "Everybody is working double shifts. They're burned out."

State guidelines call for a maximum of 12 patients to one assistant, but Beth says twice that number is typical. This is why nursing home care is crumbling.

"We cannot physically do it," she says.

In this spot last week an aging Las Vegas Valley resident told of the poor care his wife receives in one of the local nursing homes that has filed for protection under federal bankruptcy laws. At least a third of Nevada's nursing homes have filed.

The home was not identified. Yet half a dozen readers called to say they were sure it was the one in which they or their spouses were staying.

None correctly identified the home, but all spoke of poorly trained or overworked staffs. One man said his nursing home has no air conditioning.

None of the complaints surprise Bruce McAnnany, the long-term care ombudsman for the Nevada Division of Aging Services office in Las Vegas.

"I get complaints about all the nursing homes," he said. "There's staffing problems across the board. It's a killer. There's a lot of burnout.

"They will bring in contracted staff who don't know the residents, and the residents won't be getting the type of care they're supposed to be getting."

People ask McAnnany which homes are the best for their loved ones. He can't tell them that.

He does tell them a nursing home can't be judged by how it looks or smells. He suggests talking to residents and considering new homes that aren't full.

"They're geared up for it, and the patient-to-staff ratio is better," McAnnany said. "But in time they all fall into the same trap."

That trap is a complicated web of state and federal funding cuts and changes in reimbursement rules that have forced nursing home owners to "cheapen down" by reducing staffs and payrolls, said Don Laws, a national nursing home broker.

"The problem is nationwide. It's just unbelievable," Laws said. "They have to keep these facilities open for their stockholders. But if you boarded up a few, that would get the politicians' attention."

Somebody needs to pay attention. The over-60 population is growing faster in Southern Nevada than anywhere else in the nation. We need more places for these people to live than ever before. Our system for taking care of the most frail among them is crumbling.

"If something isn't done," Beth said, "it's going to be a horrible situation."