I have seen the dystopian future of elderly care(telegraph.co.uk) |
I have seen the dystopian future of elderly care(telegraph.co.uk) |
Its staffed with minimum wage workers who are in perilous conditions, with no support, time or backup. They are cleaning shit a piss all day long, and being shouted at for being foreign by the demented.
At a certain point, you fire so many there aren't any left in the area. I moved my relative to another area for unrelated reasons, but it was the same story at the new place too.
There were a few really good ones tbh, but 95% were in private care because nobody else would hire them.
First, the PAs from the agency who employed them did a better job than we could have. Most of them were current nurses picking up extra money or former nurses who had retired from active work. Save for one who was new to the job and clearly in over her head (and removed from the account after one short shift), they were all competent and conscientious caregivers, if maybe struggling personally one way or another. Not a job anyone chooses to do, I suspect, but one they're often driven to by circumstance.
Second, that kind of care is prohibitively expensive long-term. The memory care facility costs 25% to 30% of the in-home care, and is far safer. We got lucky and had access to a smaller facility with a very low resident-to-staff ratio.
In the US, at least, I don't see the prospects for this kind of care getting anything but worse. I worry that once the Baby Boomer volume of elders passes through the system, the capital that has swallowed so much of elder care up will pull out and a lot of it will collapse and what survives won't be particularly good or affordable, even compared to current levels.
The solution is to pay these positions well enough to attract people who genuinely believe in the profession. But society optimises away from doing that because there's no obvious ROI outside of making running costs cheaper.
I am noting that the current system is dystopian, and pointed out the causes for those dystopian.
I would have hoped that the implication is obvious: the system is at fault.
In the UK at least, I reject that homes are run like prisons, mainly because prisons here have much less staff and a lower standard of cleanliness. We also don't (yet) have private prisons.
"solving" adult social care is a big issue that can't be solved by staffing alone.
Robots might make it a little less terrible.
But, given the deficiency of the UK to actually grasp the nettle of adult social care, this is probably what we'll get.
A better way, perhaps is better integration of care in the community, as in old people mixed in and around young. (safeguarding issue need to be solved though)
I think this is more of a cultural problem. Aging is a normal part of life.
Eldercare has been quite dystopian here for quite some time. You don't need robots to be dystopian, rather just the casual indifference of a paperclip-maximizing bureaucracy. I can't read the full article, but it seems like these robots at least move around and interact rather than merely being an automated process that automatically checks off boxes like "patient turned" and "bed cleaned". So they would appear to be a step up from the current absurd staffing ratios.
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-granted-patent-for-ai-l...
https://westenglandbylines.co.uk/opinion/daily-telegraph-dis...
Do you think that your current resolve is correct for everyone around you, and should be generally mandated?
I agree to a reluctance to rely upon others, in the face of infirmity, but will I have the courage to forego that reliance in euthasia? I don't know.
I recently learned of the term “medical divorce”. Elderly couples divorcing, so they’re not saddled with the medical bills if one of them passes away. How insanely cruel is this? Is allowing people to go out on their own terms worse than this?
I don’t know about “generally mandated” but if I am lucid enough to decide, I should be allowed to. It is more humane, safer, cleaner to do with medical professionals than jumping from a bridge.
Our choices are either improve healthcare, elder care so people spend their last years in dignity or give them other options. By now, We have proven that we cannot or will not make healthcare, elder care affordable (it would be ideal to make it affordable). Which leaves us with what other options? Birth rates are falling almost across the world , we’ll have more and more older folks
As compared to be stuck on a bed in your own filth while your body is developing lesions on the back because you can't move? It is basically state sanctioned scaphism. Give me a ticket out of this hell hole.
as my grandfather descended into dementia and became wheelchair bound he talked about suicide a lot.
in less than a year he couldn't remember his wife / kids / grandchildren. he lasted ~4 more years.
he saw it was coming, and having watched it I don't disagree with his sentiment. when comes my time I want to be able to pull the trigger.
or even encouraged?
The government could make time for this and they could tell the lords to do one. They just chose not to.
In advanced societies of course, but we have few and unfortunate people travel from far and wide to reach those services.
So we'll get the robots instead and the cries in response to the horrors of malfunction, will not be heard because the victims are politically weak. I only hope we never do this in education.