Dec 22, 2020
Rosalind Marshall-Jones is an innovative speaker with more than 15 years of experience in the caregiving industry. She is a seasoned health care provider, who runs Jacksonville’s Best Caregivers, an organization that provides short and long-term health care. In this episode, Roz discusses the impact #covid19 has had on home healthcare from anxiety, depression to feelings of isolation.
Hi, I am Roz Jones, I'm the CEO and owner of Jacksonville's Best
Caregivers, and we are located in the Sunshine State of
Jacksonville, Florida. My company, we are a nonmedical home
healthcare business, and we provide four levels of service to your
loved one: sitter, homemaker, companion, home health aid, and
certified nursing assistant. Our mantra is, "If you can't do it
all, you give us a call."
Today I just want to talk to you all a little bit about caregiving
during #COVID19, what has changed, is anything still the same? As
many of us know, it's not the nursing homes that many of our loved
ones may be in or may eventually be in, were not built for
isolation. So with them being isolated in the nursing home, it's
caused many problems. It's caused depression. It's caused anxiety,
as well as death. Some people have died from loneliness.
So how do we reverse this? How do we make sure that this does not
continue on? We have to make sure that either you have to make sure
you stay in contact either by phone, or by writing letters, or
sending cookies. I'm going to give you a good example, the client
that I'm taking care of today, her great nieces and nephews and
friends during #COVID19, the children drew pictures, someone baked
cookies for her, someone sent her a really nice bottle of scotch.
Yes. So they have sent her all kinds of wonderful things to keep
her going, and they have called, and that is so important. The
isolation, even though it stops the physical contact, you still can
contact through letter writing and these other things. So that's
part of the way #COVID19 has impacted the nursing homes.
Now, so far as doctor's visits, that's another impact, because many
of the people living in facilities have doctors come in. Well, now
they're doing the telemedicine to where they're doing it over the
phone. So the lady that I'm taking care of, we have had to talk to
the doctors by phone, and we have actually had to do the actual
assessment of her body for the doctor, or for the nurse, or
whoever, because either they're not able to get in because they
didn't take the #COVID19 test, or they won't come in because of the
high risk to the population here in the different facilities. So
that's another way #COVID19 has impacted.
Also too, #COVID19 has impacted when it comes to advanced
directives. Many people did not, during #COVID19, they didn't have
their advanced directive. So when it was time to make decisions to
move people, they didn't have that information already taken care
of, so they didn't know how [the patient] wanted to be treated, do
I want a DNR? Do I want to be incubated? These were decisions that
were not discussed nor prepared for prior to #COVID19.
So now, since #COVID19, you have to sit down and have this
conversation. I know people don't want to talk about death and all
of this, but it's a conversation that has to be had. There's no way
to get around it, none of us can get around it. So make it easy for
your family. Have everything in order, your advanced directive,
your will, your trust, so that this stuff does not go to probate.
Let's not make the courts rich. Let's leave a legacy for your
family by getting your life insurance, make sure it's up to date,
make sure all of this stuff is taken care of because now #COVID19
is pushing us… is forcing us, to have this conversation that we
didn't want to have before.
One of my clients, she was supposed to have hip surgery, and for
many of any type of major surgeries or minor surgeries, they pushed
it back. The reason why they pushed it back was because the
hospitals needed either the ventilators or the PPE to take care of
people with #COVID19. So that was a priority. So if your surgery
was not life-threatening, you had to postpone it. But now since you
postpone it, you have to do different things for pre-op, during the
surgery, and post-op that you didn't have to do before
#COVID19.
Also too, during the #COVID19 crisis, we asked people and I beg,
"Please, ma'am, please, sir, go and get tested." Not only for your
peace of mind, but then to keep the people that you are around,
your loved ones, to keep them safe. Not only get the #COVID19 test,
but get the antibody test to see if you have had come in contact
with someone in the past, or if you currently have it, because the
antibodies will tell you instantly whether or not you have been in
contact.
So those are just some of the ways that #COVID19 has impacted
caregiving. And another way it's impacted too, is that going to the
grocery store is different. We have to go during non-high peak
hours to the grocery store, or they can't go at all and I have to
go out and do the shopping, or we have to use Instacart or some of
these other shopping companies to bring the food in. Then in some
of the facilities, they have cut out dining completely, and they
deliver the food to the resident because of #COVID19.
Now some of the facilities here in Florida, and I'm not sure about
everywhere else, but here in Florida, they are just getting to
stage one to where they are allowing them to come back out and have
some type of interaction with one another. But for months, for six
months, many of us have had to take care of the person inside of
the facility, or, I'm blessed with my client, she has a car. So we
go out and do what we call field trips or excursions. We ride
around the city or we may take a trip. Many of you may be familiar
with St. Augustine, so we ride through St. Augustine. We may go
somewhere else, but getting out once a week, those are the things
that you have to remember when you have a loved one in a facility,
and not even at a facility, at your house because of the isolation,
get them out of the house. That is so important.
Then also too, another thing that we've had to do is Amazon has
been huge here in a lot of the facilities. They deliver here at
least four or five times a day because they work with Whole Foods,
so they bring the food, they deliver undergarments, they deliver
the bed pads, medicine, pill boxes, all these types of things that
we took for granted that we used to go to the store for, now we've
had to alter our shopping because we cannot go out like we used to
in the public.
Even me as a caregiver, I have had to alter a lot of my life. I,
too, only go to the stores here in Jacksonville. They allow
essential personnel to come in on Thursday mornings and Friday
mornings before anybody else to do shopping, which is nice. So that
means that we don't come in contact with the general public that
much, other than the employees at the store.
I used to take my uniforms to the dry cleaners. I don't do that
anymore because I don't know who may or may not have #COVID19
that's cleaning the clothes, so I do everything myself. When I go
home, it's a different process. I Lysol my shoes before I come in.
I change my clothes in the garage, and I'll wash them separate from
everybody else in the house. So #COVID19 has taken a significant
impact, not only on the people receiving care, but also on
essential employees.
I bathe with a different soap. I don't bathe with Dove or Dial. I
bought a special surgical soap that I use to make sure that I'm
clean. These are the precautions that I take since #COVID19. Then
on a weekly basis, I go and get a #COVID19 test. Every week, I have
a standing appointment to where I go and get a #COVID19 test.
The new normals are, I'm going to give you an example, at the end
of our shifts, before I leave out, we have to wipe down the doors
with Clorox wipes. All the high touch areas. We make sure that we
have it clean, the refrigerator door, the microwave, the toilet
seat handle, the guard rails that they pull up with. All of that is
things that of course we would clean, but now we clean it more
often to reduce the opportunity for #COVID19. So it's a new norm.
Are we going to go back to the way we were? No, no, I don't think
so. I really doubt it.
One of the first things when #COVID19 first came out, the concern
was because of my age if I go to the hospital with #COVID19, will
they treat me or would they let me die? That was heart clenching
for me to hear one of the clients say that. It wasn't even a
client, it was just one of the residents, excuse me, walking in the
hallway and having a conversation, "Will they treat me or will they
let me die because of my age?"
So that was the mentality for a lot of them until it started coming
out that they're treating the elderly as well as the young, and
everybody was being treated the same. But initially when it came
out, that was scary. They were saying that we weren't going to
treat the elderly and they were going to let them die. That was
real scary. Even with the veterans, a lot of them, again,
isolation. So we're sending them back through another trauma, it's
almost like another war.
My parents, my dad is a Vietnam vet. It's been very hard on them
because they are so isolated as well. So we haven't even been able
to visit my parents. Now, my client here, she's very lucky. We get
to go and see her daughter and her granddaughter, but some people
aren't that lucky where they get to actually go and see their loved
one.
But we still take the precautions when we go out and visit. We have
the mask. We have the hand sanitizer, we do all of that, but it's
important to her. She always says, "I want to see my babies. These
are my babies. That's my only grandchild." So we make sure that we
take her on a field trip to go see her children, because they're so
isolated and they can't get out like they want, they're not coping
well. A lot of them have lost weight. A lot of them don't eat. They
don't have an appetite. That's when depression sets in. So some of
them have had really gone to a deep depression. Now here it is six
months later, they're starting to get out, and it's almost like a
flower being blossoming that they're able to get out.
Just like this weekend, I will make sure that we get out at least
two or three times in the next couple of days to make sure that
they see each other. That's part of it is to make sure that we try
to get back to some, normal way of visiting and some normal way of
being able to see family and friends. So those are the things that
they don't have. Because when they were able to visit during
#COVID19, they had to visit on the other side of a screen or look
outside their window to visit with their loved ones. That was
horrible. That was horrible. Or they had to do a drive by.
With my client, her daughter has done drive-bys, and we've sat
outside and spoken from a distance, but that's all we could do.
That's all we could do. We are a country of human touch and touch
is so important in thriving, and healing, and living. When you lose
that touch, they lose a lot of their identity and who they are. So
we try our best to make sure that if they can't do a hug and a kiss
that at least they can see them, at least from a distance.
But now, they're going to allow some hugging and things like that.
So hopefully it's going to be a turnaround for a lot of them. This
isolation has been horrible. This has been horrible. I can't wait
for them to be able to get back out and mingle with their
community. These facilities were built for them to be able to still
thrive in a community that's similar to what they had when they're
at home. And we shut that off for six months. It was like taking
six months of their life away.
My optimism for 2020, I think we are going to be able to start
having more interaction but we have flu season coming up. That's
the scary part. So still we have to take those precautions, even in
flu season, just remember that. This is not over, so we have two
things that's going to butt heads. We have #COVID19 and we have the
flu season.
Take the same precautions. And get your documentation in order.
That's my biggest thing. Please, ma'am, please, sir, sit down with
your family members and get your documentation in order, and don't
let it go to probate.
My name is Roz Jones, and I am aware that I am rare.
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