Dysfunctional Families Facing Death Wreak Havoc at End of Life

August 3, 2023

What do Dysfunctional Families do at the End of Life?

Dysfunctional families facing death and dying have flawed fractured family conversations. Often they do not communicate at all or engage in destructive accusations lobbed at others. They see one another as enemies. They demonize one another!

Dysfunctional families facing death are feuding families, escalating the pain of death to a chaotic war room. They blame each other instead of locking arms in a crisis.

Dysfunctional families facing death sabotage resolution.

Facing Fractured Family Communication

What are some of the struggles that these aging dysfunctional families facing death with fractured family communication can face?

Aging parents who lack the capacity to make decisions have no advance directives, DPOA

health-care proxy, and adult siblings, who must make end-of-life decisions, can’t agree

Withdrawal of life support with no designated health care agent then dysfunctional families facing death the adult children and/or spouse disagree

Pain management Dysfunctiona families facing death adult children and/or spouses disagree.

Answer to Fractured Family at End of Life – Mediation.

Mediation is a tool that fractured families can be a good resource for dysfunctional families at the end of life. It can help with these difficult families facing the death of a parent without fracturing the entire family. It can allow an older person to die without pain inflicted by their own aging dysfunctional families.

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders in aging dysfunctional families
Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family

Master 10 Clinical Tools Professionals Must learn before they work with These Difficult Families
Learn how to solve dysfunctional family problems like End of Life family chaos after you master these tools for aging dysfunctional families
Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist
Learn how to work with characters like Rupert Murdock & Logan Roy

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End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

February 23, 2021

Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting, and feuding in families at the end of life?

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain, and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death
Help clients be active participants in their care
Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
Provide family center care to caregiver and family
Choose the right support services through all stages of death
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID
Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM
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The 2 Deadliest US Sites of COVID-19 Nursing Homes & Prisons

May 2, 2020

PRISON INMATES AND NURSING HOME PATIENTS NOT 6FT APART – 6 FEET UNDER

70% of inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19. In Kansas, the Lansing Correctional Facility had a riot of inmates over COVID-19 lack of care or protection It took the rebellion to get the coronavirus testing PPE and care. The Bureau of Prisons in Kansas confirmed finally that 79 staff have coronavirus and 88 prisons and prisoners dead.

Older residents in nursing homes cannot rebel like prisoners. Many can’t even walk. The Atlantic Magazine just published an article, We are Killing Elders Now. The writer states “In at least six states, these fatalities account for half of all COVID-19 deaths, and according to the World Health Organization, half of all coronavirus fatalities in Europe have been traced to nursing homes too. Some of this mortality is linked to long-term-care facilities that are shoddily run or that violate health standards. But most of them are doing the best they can with what they have. And they don’t have much”.

KAISER FOUNDATION NURSING HOME STAFFING AND USE OF PPE NOT REQUIRED IN MOST STATES

Kaiser reports -Staff Screening. It is more common for states to recommend rather than require daily screening of staff for illness in NFs (24 states recommend, 16 states + DC require)

Use of PPE. More states recommend (23 states) than require (7 states + DC) staff to use PPE

Two States that require testing for coronavirus of ALL residents of nursing homes are Maryland where 556 have died as of the Washington Post article. and Tennessee

THE FEDS HAVE NO CMS FEDERAL GUIDELINES OR REPORTING

We have no federal guidelines for safety testing according to an article by the Kaiser Foundation

It is now estimated that 16,000 deaths have occurred in nursing homes and that is without the federal government revealing any numbers and not making available any testing. But the numbers are probably huge- if we could just do testing.

CMS announced it would have a meeting of a “panel” of experts “ sometime at the end of May”. After probably 20,000 older people died and the feds did nothing this shows their sense of urgency about this pandemic’s national “elder cleansing”.

WHAT CONNECTS PRISONS AND NURSING HOMES – CONCENTRATION CAMPS

So, what is the connection between the viral spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes and prisons- 6 feet ? Prisoners and residents, in nursing homes, and prisons cannot social distance. Jails and prisons have human beings crammed together with no choice. Nursing homes have 2 beds or if you are on Medicaid three to a room. Neither group has a choice to social distance. They are ” concentrated” as in concentration camps or death camps.

Do SOMETHING – HELP NURSING HOMES PREVENT MORE CARNAGE

So, as someone who has spent her career in aging, I am calling out to everyone, especially professional in aging – do something. Since the feds appear to be doing little- call your congressman, write a letter to the editor.

BE KIND LIKE RACHEL MADDOW REPORTS LA JEWISH HOME LA WAS

Rachel Maddow suggests calling your local nursing homes and see what they need. Be kind like the LA Jewish Home was to a smaller nursing home LA Brier Oaks. They wanted to test their residents and had no tests and the larger LA Jewish Home had tests and shared them with the smaller as a good neighbor. What they found was ravaging but it also showed caring and generosity. Care and be generous and show the helpless elders in nursing homes in your town you are opposed to -nursing home being prisons or concentration camps.

Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2020

If your clients ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting.

9 Warning Signs That Mediation May be Needed

a.Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b.Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other siblings, friends and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c.Is their family productive or non-productive?

1,.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

2,.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas of friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d.Is their family stable or fragile?

1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

2.Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

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