Some fear patient care threatened as staffing shortages plague nursing homes – By Brian C Rittmeyer and Julia Maruca (Triblive) / Oct 2, 2023
An employee at a Westmoreland County nursing home says the conditions of her job have brought her to tears.
Residents regularly have to wait for help and often go hungry because of a lack of people to feed them. A single staffer sometimes is asked to care for 60 residents overnight.
“So many residents sit there and stare at their food,” said the woman, a nursing assistant for 20 years who asked that her name not be used used for fear of retaliation. “Some of them might wait 20 or 30 minutes until someone starts feeding them. Then they have to hope the staff member feeding them is courteous enough to warm their food.”
Industry experts agree Pennsylvania’s nursing homes are facing disastrous staffing struggles that stand to worsen, in part, because of the state’s aging population.
