One day certified nursing assistant Brenda Chaney was on duty in an Indiana nursing when she discovered a patient lying on the floor, unable to stand.
But Chaney couldn’t help the woman. She had to search for a white nursing aide because the woman on the floor had left instructions that she did not want any black caregivers. And the nursing home insisted it was legally bound to honor the request.
Elderly patients, who won more legal control over their quality of life in nursing homes in recent years, sometimes wish to dictate the race of those who care for them. And some nursing homes enforce those preferences in their staff policies.
WTF! Good luck finding nursing homes that don’t have Blacks, Hispanics, or Asians on staff. If’ I’ve fallen and can’t get up or I’m lying in my own piss or vomit– I’m not going to be all that choosy about who picks me or cleans me off.
That's right no brown people are touching me.
At nursing homes, tension over patient rights and race “comes up occasionally in virtually every state in the United States,” said Steve Maag, director of assisted living and continuing care at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.
Maag said he has gotten several questions a year from nursing home officials about reassigning workers to suit residents’ racial preferences. Another case in Indiana last year resulted in a damage settlement for a caregiver. A state agency in Montana has also handled a formal bias complaint.
Nursing homes can be hotbeds of racial friction, said David Smith, a Drexel University professor who has studied racial integration in hospitals and long-term care centers. In urban areas, staffs are often predominantly African-American while most patients are white. Some elderly people revert in dementia to the prejudices they grew up with. “You’ve got to remember the nursing home residents grew up in the time of Jim Crow, even in the North. They regress back,” Smith said.
Being in a wheelchair and a diaper seems like the wrong time to “regress” to “the good ole days” and forget their 21st century manners.
State and national officials say they aren’t sure how often a patient has rejected a caregiver based on race. A similar case involving an Indianapolis nursing home resulted in an $84,000 settlement last year, but officials with the Indiana Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would not comment on whether other complaints had been filed because they are not public record.
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