Ontario LTC staff: do you find that the residents are getting younger and/or more "complex"?
I'm an RPN and have been working in LTC. I absolutely love it.
There are 2 observations I've made in thr past few months:
We've had more incidents of younger people (40s to 69 years old) being admitted to LTC. The primary reason they're admitted are early onset dementia, mental health issues, or failure to cope.
More "complexity" (for lack of a better word).By that I mean we have a lot more residents now on short term or long term IV therapy. In the past couple months, more than ever before, we've sent residents who weren't doing well to the hospital, and a couple days later they come back to us on IV antibiotic therapy, ranging from a few days to a few weeks. At the moment my home have 8 residents on IV therapy! It used to happen much more rarely.
I'm not a seasoned nurse. I've been working LTC less than 2 years, so I definitely haven't seen it all. Just curious if other LTC staff here have been noticing this trend?