On August 19, we learned that “multiple rooms” were once again authorized in CHSLDs. Understand: up to four people in the same room.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
COVID-19 continues to strike, and a resurgence is expected with the start of the school year, but it seems that we will “deal with it”. The good news is that through a domino effect, there will be fewer people on the stretchers in the emergency room because we will be able, on the upper floors, to free up beds thanks to the transfer of people forced to wait at the hospital that a place becomes available in a CHSLD. From an accounting and administrative point of view, it makes sense. From a human point of view, it is unsustainable.
My eldest daughter has four young children. They asked their parents to sleep in the same room because it’s really fun to jump from one bed to another and have fun while the adults have their backs turned (a little). But everyone knows that, sooner or later, everyone will ask for their space, if not their floor in the basement. Bigger, we want to have “his” room, then “his” accommodation and “his” workspace.
On the other hand, surprisingly, at the other end of life, when you are likely to spend a lot more time in your room – you sleep more, you receive personal care, you are bedridden due to your health condition – it becomes acceptable to occupy a limited space with total strangers.
Suddenly, we have to share their intimacy, their vulnerability, their treatments, possibly their wanderings as well as the comings and goings of the nursing staff and visitors.
I have in mind the case of my father, who thus shared a room, in particular with a man who died during the night. Staff commotion, interventions according to procedure, sudden arrival of the bereaved family. In the morning, an empty bed. My father, who hadn’t slept a wink, had been thrown coldly into the end of a stranger’s life, a few meters from his own expectation.
Over the past two years, there has obviously been a lot of talk about COVID-19 in CHSLDs. The room occupancy rate was, in a way, put in parallel with the risks of contagion. It was decisive. But well beyond the imperatives of the pandemic, there are also considerations of humanity, gentleness at the end of life, respect, dignity and love that we have for our old partners, our old parents, our old friends, those who very often showed us the way.
The irony is that CHSLDs are presented as living environments. It is the consecrated expression. Some of these places succeed in their bet. The staff, admirable, do the impossible to give a soul to the place.
But in quadruple occupancy, whatever the decor and the talent of the speakers, the space for oneself no longer exists. The life in front of you is dramatically narrowed.
We are told that this solution will only be considered if nothing else can be done. Recent revelations about the difficulties experienced in CHSLDs suggest that exceptions can sometimes tip over and become the rule.
These days, the CAQ unveiled its electoral slogan: “Let’s continue. »
Continue this?