My disgust levels sky rocket whenever I’m exposed to the covid cult leaders/adherents preaching more lock down and masks to “protect the vulnerable”. These people are unconcerned about the vulnerable- they only care for themselves. They’ve been so indoctrinated and are so filled with fear they can’t or won’t acknowledge the harm this tyrannical over reach caused.
I experienced this first hand, losing my mother during the covid insanity. At this same time another close family member suffered a stroke. Instead of having family accessible. Family was restricted. Preferring not to get into aspects that are personally difficult, but, the restrictions caused a great deal of harm. In fact the real harm outweighed the claimed benefits.
Globe and Mail Covid 19 restrictions unleashed a crisis of delerium
One aspect of health care during the pandemic that has received considerably less attention is the failure of effective delirium care
Fortunately, delirium can be prevented or minimized using simple strategies. Within our own health practices, we have seen that a variety of interventions that don’t require drugs – including promoting family caregiver presence, encouraging patients to move while in hospital, and minimizing disruptions to eating, drinking and sleeping routines – have reduced the incidence of delirium and prevented falls, while decreasing length of stays and reducing the need for institutionalization.
But doctors had warned that the hospital conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic would disrupt delirium prevention care and produce an epidemic within the pandemic. Restrictions on visitor access to prevent viral spread led to patients feeling socially isolated; stressed and under-resourced medical staff had to wear face-obscuring protective equipment and minimize their visits to patients’ rooms, which increased their reliance on drugs to manage delirium. “If you could design a health care system that would generate delirium, you would design exactly the system we have with COVID-19,” Dr. Sharon Inouye wrote in The New York Times in May, 2020.
And our study, recently published in JAMA Network Open, showed that fears of a delirium epidemic were realized here in Canada. During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults admitted to Ontario hospitals experienced more delirium and were discharged home with more sedating medications compared with before the pandemic. It was a perfect storm.
Our study results are particularly alarming because we had made so much progress in delirium care over the past 30 years. Initiatives, such as senior-friendly hospitals, units specifically for the acute care of the elderly, and hospital elder-life programs, have flourished across Canada. In the three years preceding the pandemic, our study shows a clear trend of declining prescriptions of harmful and addictive sleep medicines given to older people after they left the hospital.
COVID-19 disrupted this hard-fought progress. Even after the onset of the pandemic, the number of new sedatives being prescribed after hospital stays has not returned to prepandemic levels.
We need to reverse these dangerous trends, especially since it is likely that the fall and winter will bring a seasonal wave of viral illness such as influenza, RSV and COVID-19, among others. Hospital and health care systems will soon be faced with decisions about visitor and volunteer policies in the face of viral outbreaks.
We can minimize rates of delirium by implementing policies centred on delivering dignified care, especially to older persons with cognitive impairment who cannot always advocate for themselves.
By denying these persons their advocates you mask pushers and lock down demanders denied these vulnerable persons their well being. And their lives.
We also have an opportunity now to renew nationwide hospital efforts to mandate flexible hospital visitation and implement the simple and evidence-based care strategies needed to prevent and manage delirium.
Health care providers can also recommit ourselves to this mantra: Never again should sick patients with delirium be isolated from their family caregivers.
Health care providers can also recommit ourselves to this mantra: Never again should sick patients with delirium be isolated from their family caregivers.
It should not have happened the first time- and it should not ever happen again! People who demand others wear masks and demand lock downs are people who should seek mental health care and leave others free from their harmful delusions and coercive edicts. Those that want to wear masks because they perceive them as effective can do as they choose. Leave the rest of us alone. You and your ilk contributed to the destruction of many things- Your own irrationality needs to be checked!
2 replies on “Covid-19’s unnecessary overreach unleashed a crisis of delirium in our hospitals”
Preach it, Penny!! I remember how hard it was for you when your mother was captive in “care”. Not to mention all the people who died in the various nursing homes as a direct result of Covid “care”.
Yesterday, as my apartment was being repainted, one of the workers mentioned his mother was a nurse and it broke her heart to see what nurses were expected to be during “Covid”, although many of her colleagues just sort of shrugged and toughened themselves up for the duration.
The “nursing code” pretty much went down the tube. See the “Code of Ethics” in place prior to the Covid scene where it talks about “Nursing values and ethical responsibilities”:
https://cdn1.nscn.ca/sites/default/files/documents/resources/code-of-ethics-for-registered-nurses.pdf
Nowhere does it say, do what you have to do in order to keep your job.
The situation with my mom still troubles me to this day.
I’m so sick of reading certain people’s claims about their caring and concern for people who are so in need of their family/advocates- that they deny them these supports- It’s a selfish entitled opinion that’s based in their own fear!
Wish they’d shut the hell up!