Aging Well: Choosing a Nursing Home for Mother

By Robert Beckum

I did something this week that hundreds of people do every day. Still, it was difficult. I placed my mother in a nursing home. She is eighty-nine years old. Her health deteriorated in the last year, she fell two or three times a week, and my father was no longer able to lift her without threat of injury to her or himself. It was the right decision. It was a loving decision. It was a heart-rending decision. As my sister said, “If this decision is so right, it seems we would feel better about it.” Her comment reminded me of a fundamental principle involved in making the tough choices of elder care for our parents: When our heart and our head are in conflict, we often have to go with our head and trust that our heart will “catch up.” Still, making decisions about a parent's care is an affair of the heart.
One factor making my decision so emotionally difficult is the same factor which affects many families with an elderly parent from the greatest generation. In my mother's memory bank of fears there is no fear greater than “going into the nursing home.” No amount of calling this place a “skilled nursing facility” fooled her. In her mind the ultimate “N-Word” was “nursing” home---a term vulgar, insulting and demeaning to her. Her anger and fear had little to do with the quality of care given and much to do with the quality of life lost---loss of privacy, loss of independence, and loss of control. While our heads can help insure quality of care, our hearts are helpless in the face of a parent's losses due to age.
In helping others make this same decision practically every day at Magnolia Manor, I have prepared a forty-eight point checklist of things to look for in choosing a nursing home. My checklist is well intended and filled with good suggestions, even if I say so myself. Things are different, however, when it involves your mother. As I began the admissions process, I was amazed at how my “checklist” narrowed to one supremely important question. As I met the admissions director, the director of nursing and the administrator, I listened carefully and asked myself silently: “Is this a person I can trust with my mother's care?” A second question I satisfied before leaving was, “Does each staff member know they can depend on me to be a vital partner in my mother's care?”
From this experience, I have learned it is most important to establish respectful relationships with the staff of caregivers within a nursing center, as it is to check out a nursing center's reputation and record. Things are different when the patient is your loved one, and after all, every elder patient is somebody's loved one. As a result of this week, I think I will be reworking that checklist I have been giving to others, making sure that establishing a familial relationship with the care giving team is right at the top...

Rev. Robert Beckum isVice President of Church Relations and Development Magnolia Manor.