During this year across placements in the hospitals and my personal experiences I have been disheartened to observe the attitude of many nurses and allied health professionals to the nursing home residents in the hospital setting. What was most apparent was the view that all we needed to do was get them back to a level of function so the nursing home would take them back and do that as quickly as possible with as little input as possible. With respect part of this attitude has developed because of the shortage of nursing and allied health staff within the hospital system and the large caseload they have to cover.
I believe that physiotherapist have the training to offer the elderly population a great deal that would improve their quality of life as they enter the twilight years. Yet these skills that we have are not being utilised by the nursing homes or low care facilities and those that do employ a physiotherapist are using them basically to do mobility assessments for the clients care plan.
Obviously there are multiple factors surrounding this issue, the pay scales in the care facilities do not encourage physiotherapist to work in this area, the allocation of funding within the nursing home - carer v physiotherapist to suggest just a few.
I hope that if I work in the hospital environment I will be able to manage my time efficiently to enable quality time to be spent with some of these elderly clients.
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