I wanted to give everyone an update about the situation with the alcoholic client that uses his home health aides for a cleaning service. I'm down to two days a week until the agency can find another case for me.
I'm so frustrated right now with people who are using aides for a cheap form of housekeeping instead of actually allowing us to the job we were hired to do. Our focus should be primarily on client care and not being ordered about to do housework. This is the same person who had me wash underwear loaded with feces last week. According to OSHA, feces is considered biohazard waste and removal of stains is followed by the same cleanup of bloodborne pathogens and spills. I told him that and he got angry. I got the agency in on it, and he told them he didn't need me tomorrow because I had already cleaned today. The coordinator told him that we are there for personal care and we are not a maid service.
I followed everyone's advice. I wasn't able to quit the case immediately, because the agency didn't have another client lined up.
I am definitely done with working for this person on Friday's. I just want my life and weekends back and being able to pick days that I want to work.
It's not always the home health aides that are bad. Some of us are good natured people and get take for granted.
I make a mean lamb stew. I add a touch of cinnamon to the curry to bring out the flavor.
I had my own rosemary stash I was growing, but it ended up drying up. I'm going to get my herbal plants growing again for the spring. I usually buy my plants at Home Depot.
It's not always the caregivers that are bad. In fact, I find in my experience of 25 years in this field as one and as a homecare agency owner, that it is rarely the caregiver who is bad. The people working these jobs do so because they need the money.
Caregivers often meet with unreasonable impossible demands from clients and their families because they know the person needs the job. Then you get the clients who are world-class complainers and trouble-makers who love nothing more than to make life hard for another human being. Send these people a homecare worker they can lord it over and that's a gift to them.
I can spot them a mile away and you probably can too. I just went out to open a new client case a couple days ago. For a 71 year old woman who lived alone. Her daughter met me when I came out. The first thing I noticed was that the client seemed drunk and the home was filthy and somewhat hoarded. There were ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. Then I asked to use the bathroom. Not to actually use it because it was disgusting, but to check it out. You learn a lot about a potential client from the bathroom. The daughter claimed the mother wasn't incontinent and very independent. There were soiled pull-ups loaded in the bathroom garbage can. There were liquor bottles in the cabinet under the sink too. All this tells me that the potential client's family is not reliable and one-hundred percent of the responsibility for the client would probably fall on the hired caregiver.
I gave the position to one of the experienced caregivers who's been in this work as long as I have so we shall see. I do a prbationary period for both caregiver and client, so we shall see. So far there's been no problems. I gave the clients a copy of the Clients' Bill of Rights and a copy of the Caregivers' Bill Of Rights which they were surprised to see. I wrote it myself. It outlines what the agency expects from the clients and their families and/or legal representatives. Like there will be no forms of abuse tolerated. I consider it abuse if a client calls to report on an aide for nothing other than they wanted to. Or they use the threat of calling. I will pull a person out and end service.
Your agency needs to show it's workers some solidarity. You all should go on strike.
This man cancelled today's service because I think he does his drinking on the days I'm not in there.
The worst part of this entire situation is they kept sending aides in there knowing that the air quality was so bad to breathe and the apartment was hoarded with nasty clothes and had mice. One aide washed his clothes and he had mixed empty beer cans in with the laundry.
I had gotten the clothes done and the smell started getting better with the constant cleaning.
What turned me off is when the sexual harassment started, and he started complaining about calling the agency to complain about nothing. He kept saying that the supervisors were watching me and other nonsense. Then the talking loud in my face when I didn't show up for a shift because of the weather. I told the agency that I wouldn't be able to get there due to the ice and to push the visit to the next day. Well, he claimed no one called him from the office to let him know. This is common sense. It is 10° degrees and the city is frozen solid. The only thing he could do was yell saying you are going to do my laundry and you can't leave until you get it done. The laundry room had black mold and spiders. Something bit the hell out of my knee, and they were getting sore from going up and down two flights of stairs hauling laundry and trash all afternoon. I couldn't figure out why I felt so sick on the weekends. I cut Fridays out working with this client.
I wasn't even his regular assigned aide for this case.
I don't like people thinking they have this type of control over my time and schedule.
Your skills are in high demand. You know you can find an agency with a higher-end clientele to work for in a snap, right?
I know that's true about hospice. Medicare pays for home health aides for patients enrolled in Part A who have hospice at home.
Do you have friends or acquaintances who work as home health aides for other agencies? So many good jobs are through word-of-mouth and most agencies offer referral bonuses.
This sounds harsh but, IMO, if you're getting paid $X per hour, focus on earning that hard-earned money working for someone who isn't a piece of work drunk. There are so many decent people out there who need your help and get denied because Mr. Touchy-Grabby-Poopypants doesn't get "fired" from his agency and is taking up valuable resources.
I'm at the age where I don't suffer fools (I just had a big birthday so I've earned it, lol). Your agency can "fire" him by calling the VA and making him their problem again. The agency will lose no money and will have a new client in his place before the end of the day.
I've been telling Scampie for ages that she should go into private care and not work for an agency. A caregiveer like her can do well to put up a profile on a caregiver website like care.com or others. Then you can pick and choose what kind of clients you work for.
They know now. I made it known. Unfortunately, the RN was a little reluctant to voice her opinion and probably watered it down a bit. She told me what had happened in full detail.
I'm more vocal and would shut it down immediately.
I'm still angry at what happened. My days with him would consist of cleaning and taking out trash loaded with beer cans from the day before.
What a waste of space. There are so many people who need good and reliable aides, but our time is tied up with people like this.
Yes, this man has done some despicable things to the RN, not directly to her while she was wrapping his legs. She had to stoop down to do the work. I know I can't say here what he did, but she left two weeks ago. They sent in a male nurse.
This type of behavior is about power and control and is an attack on a woman even though he hadn't touched her.
I was running around jumping through hoops for these people until I got tired and stopped. You can only say but so much to them since they are a protected class. Sometimes these people can be some of the most meanest and entitled folks in the world. Nothing wrong with his cognition and the agency has had problems with him in the past but kept sending aides in there in spite of his drinking and his nasty hygiene.
I can deal with patients who have incontinence, but not someone who needs to be in adult briefs but in denial about it. I could no longer deal with the arrogance and nastiness of his behavior towards me. I can find another agency if they don't have the hours I want at this point. The way I see it, the agency should have done something about this client a long time ago, but their motive is to stick an aide in there and collect the money.
I think it is on the agency to make it very CLEAR what your duties are and establish boundaries from the very first. You can't be the only one that is having this problem.
The old adage.."give them an inch they will take a mile" comes to mind.
This is the truth. I raised heck today. This man has sexually harassed his nurse, me and probably a few others. The building itself is in poor shape. The laundry room has black mold and probably asbestos.
That laundry and that man's attitude was enough from last week.
When I first started out in this work, it was all about patient care. Now, I don't know what type of system we are dealing with.
It simply burns me up when people take advantage of aides in that blatant manner. Seeing all those empty beer cans in the trash made me angry. Other people need help and can't get it due to this type of nonsense. This agency has a bunch of these type of cases.