Daughter says staff at her home doesn't listen. I decided to take her for pizza tonight with Sister Best Friend and her husband. Not because Daughter deserved it, but because I wanted to be with her some extra time this weekend in honor of her birthday. When I stopped by the house to get her, I said I needed her supper an 7:00 pills. They tried to hand me the big washtub of pills. I informed them we were going to a restaurant, and I wasn't taking that with me. I just wanted the pills for supper and 7:00. So they offered me a rubber band to wrap around the cards of pills. I said I wasn't going to carry all her pills into a restaurant and began to punch the needed pills out and onto the table. I said I wanted a little baggie to put them in. They offered me a grocery bag. I asked whether one of her pills was given at 7:00 or 8:00. She said 8:00, but they usually gave the 7:00 and 8:00 pills together. I said that was fine, I'd take the 8:00 pills and give them to her.
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I dropped Daughter off back at the house at about 7:15. She called shortly after I left, asking if I remembered whether I'd given her one of the pills she takes at 8:00. I named the pill, and she said that was the one. I assured her I'd given it to her. A little later staff calls, wondering if I'd taken the 8:00 pills and given them to her. I think Daughter may have a point about their listening abilities.
5 comments:
The employees at your daughter's residence seem unusually clueless about medication. Are they very young, recent immigrants for whom English is a challenge or perhaps intellectually challenged?
The concept of needing only a few pills and a suitable container for them doesn't seem difficult to grasp.
I think they may be intellectually challenged. I'm becoming convinced that Daughter is smarter than some of them.
Wow. Terrifying.
Are residential staff required to have any kind of training before they dispense meds? They do in our state, and still mistakes get made occasionally.
They receive training. They have been trained multiple times on meds. They get written up when they mess the meds up. I don't understand why some of them haven't been fired, they've screwed things up so many times.
I think I understand the situation. If most of the residents get multiple meds, vitamins and things like stool softeners several times a day and if there is a certain amount of turmoil at medication times -- vans about to depart, meals being prepared, squabbles to sort out and so on, it could get a bit chaotic. Add the fact that many of the pills look alike or have similar names and new ones get added, old ones subtracted or substituted with generics and you have a recipe for confusion.
If the staff are overwhelmed or if they have trouble reading directions (a surprising number of people in minimum-wage jobs are functionally illiterate) I can see why they keep screwing up your DD's meds.
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