Byline: Susan Duncan, The Daily News (Kamloops)
It's disturbing how little attention the death of Juliette Bombardier got among the general public. She was the 84-year-old Alzheimer's patient who walked out an unlocked door at her care home in the middle of a freezing winter night and died in a snow bank.
Oh, you've heard enough of that story, have you? Ask yourself this. Would you be sighing with exasperation if it were your mother?
Yes, investigations were carried out by health authorities, reports were compiled, recommendations made, and the rest of us tut tutted a bit and carried on with our lives.
The only people who haven't recovered and never will are members of Juliette Bombardier's family. They are the people whose last memory of their mom was the sight of her body lying in the snow.
Pine Grove Care Centre administration fired the nurse who had unlocked the door -- as if that was the solution to the problem. To appease everyone, they laid the blame at the feet of one person who, from all reports, was a kind and caring nurse.
But this was not a one-person mistake. What happened to Bombardier is part of a systemic problem with the way seniors' care is handled in B.C. and probably across the nation.
We don't give a damn because seniors are throw-away people in our sad society.
We don't know what to do with them when they can no longer look after themselves so we put them in care facilities and accept what we get.
We're happy even with substandard care. So what if they don't get the time they need to eat their meals. Too bad if they get put to bed hours before they are ready because it's the only option for understaffed shifts. And, yes, it is unfortunate when they are left in wet clothing or can't be taken to a bathroom when they need to go, but we're sure that happens only on occasion.
Let's open our eyes.
For the sake of our wonderful elders who deserve so much more, let's quit kidding ourselves. Life in the average seniors' care facility is not living at all.
We don't need to be grateful for kindly staff at care homes. It's their job to be kind and gentle. They better be nice to the vulnerable people they care for. We don't need to throw them parties for that.
What we need to do for care aides and nurses is demand from government and private care home operators proper funding to ensure they have enough help and enough tools to ensure these residents are looked after the way any one of us would want for ourselves.
That's what care-home staff want -- adequate compensation and assistance so that when they go home at night they aren't worried about the people who can't leave.
Good care for seniors is not an easy task. It's not a cheap mandate. And it should be the No. 1 campaign issue in the upcoming provincial election.
A woman died, for God's sake, because her needs were not a priority at the place entrusted with her care. And the answer was to fire one nurse.
It's outrageous.
We should be picketing our MLAs' offices over this.
There should be letters to the editor insisting that the B.C. Coroner's Service hold a public inquest into this woman's death. The investigations were all done behind closed doors with only the final reports released.
Put the people involved on the stand and find out what happened from start to finish. It's the only way change will happen.
It won't be comfortable for anyone because Pine Grove Care Centre is not alone in its neglect of a resident. This is happening at all the private-care facilities and the public-care hospitals as well.
Seniors' care is not properly funded because we don't care enough to force the issue with government.
We don't care until our parents are placed in care and we see firsthand the overwhelming mountain of work placed on the people who look after seniors. Even then, too many of us are just so grateful to have a place to put our ailing parents that we close our mouths when we shouldn't.
It's not that difficult to make sure an Alzheimer's patient doesn't wander outside in the cold.
It requires leadership and an ability to know how to run an institution where neither the staff nor the patients are dehumanized.
When people are institutionalized, we tend to forget they are individuals with individual preferences and needs.
Bombardier's family warned Pine Grove administration their mother was wandering and closer tabs needed to be kept on her. At that point, immediate steps were needed.
Her individual care plan, which every senior in care should have, should have been reviewed and changed and brought to the attention of her entire team.
No time for that? Logistics impossible? Too bad. That's what leaders do.
Leaders make things happen and when human lives are involved, no excuse is good enough. Everyone is too busy these days to do a good job. That's the excuse of the decade and, frankly, "I'm too busy" and "I'm sorry" just doesn't cut it any more.
If that meeting had taken place, then the care aides on shift when Bombardier walked out the door on Dec. 26 may have checked her not only when they should have -- which they didn't, perhaps due to other pressures -- but more often.
The scapegoat nurse may not have left that door unlocked. Administration could be resting easy now -- and we sure hope they aren't-- in the knowledge that their residents are being looked after based on their individual needs rather than the staff's needs or the care home's financial picture.
Instead, Interior Health officials involved in this investigation have moved on to other problems; Pine Grove families are holding parties for their staff; the care home operator has apologized (as if that counts) and the coroner's office is hemming and hawing over whether there is anything more to be learned from this death.
The only people left advocating for Juliette Bombardier are her sons and daughters, who should be grieving the loss of their mom, not fighting to save other seniors from the same plight.
That's our job -- the taxpayers of B.C. The people who may require care for themselves or others one day. We all get old.
This is not one family's battle. This is our fight together.
