More absurdity

Every few days it seems, the government, or some other ruling body, hands out a new rule or regulation. Sometimes these new prescriptions for behavior actually make sense. Too often, they are so ridiculous, that one wonders if the people who proffered these new disciplines, were of a sound mind.

In last Friday's Nevada Daily Mail, one of our regular columnists, Steve Moyer, wrote an article regarding just such a rule change. Here are a few of his words, "A catch-22 in the law resulted in More-Few Care Center getting one of four deficiencies...one of the deficiencies cited was employee's using their (bare) hands to butter bread and rolls."

Now if that was all you read of Steve's article regarding NRMC's report, that would not be so terrible, would it? After all, it is just good hygiene practice for people handling food, to make use of sanitized gloves. In a hospital or long-term care facility, this makes even more sense. At a time when swine flu is spreading at an alarming rate, it is especially a necessary practice.

Then the rub of the situation presented itself in Steve's second paragraph. "Safety issues prevent employees from handling food without gloves. Dignity issues prevent employees from wearing gloves while assisting residents to eat."

The dictionary includes the word paradox; that amply fits the stupidity of these last two sentences! The definition for paradox is "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory."

When this deficiency was presented to the board, hospital board attorney Bryan Breckenridge asked Denise Sloniker, vice-president of long term care, the simple question, "how were employees supposed to butter the bread and rolls?"

In response, Ms Sloniker offered this information, "You're not allowed to pick up the bread or roll to butter it, you can't wear gloves because it's a dignity issue, and you can't touch the food without them. For now, we will be using utensils -- holding the bread with a fork while we spread the butter." As I read these words I had several emotions running through my mind.

First, I felt empathy for Ms Sloniker and all of the staff that works at NRMC. Both my mother and grandmother were once residents at Moore-Few. The staff there treated them well and gave our family every courtesy. What we especially remembered was the tremendous effort on the staffs part to keep the facility clean and sanitary.

My second thought regarding this new information was again, how absurd it seemed. When I visited both of my family members in the dining areas back then, there were quite a few of the residents who were unable to complete a simple task like putting the butter on a roll.

The glove part of the ruling actually made sense to me. Even if you go into a fast food restaurant, most of us expect and appreciate the wearing of protective gloves by the staff handling the food. I even like to see long sleeves and hairnets on food workers.

So, the wearing of gloves by the staff at Moore-Few not only made perfect sense to me, any other practice would seem unacceptable. That brings us back to this second deficiency, the dignity rule.

Since we are using the dictionary for this article, I decided to add the definition for the word dignity -- "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect ... a sense of pride in oneself, self-respect," I think the key word in this definition is the term, respect.

When you show someone respect, you are actually practicing the golden rule: " do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That idea is what made all this seem so absurd to me. The question we should all ask ourselves is, "what would I want done for me in this particular situation, that would make me feel I was being treated with the utmost respect?"

For me, the answers were simple. First of all, I want to continue to see facilities like Moore-Few have the ability to operate in a safe and caring manner. It is very likely that many of us will have to make use of these very facilities ourselves in the future, so I want them to be able to take care of me in a sensible manner.

Second, I have no problem with the staff practicing good sanitary care, as long as it really is productive. Gloves on the staffs hands make good sense. It does not matter whether it is food or needles, the wearing of protective gloves is totally acceptable.

Third, if I get to the point that I cannot do a simple task like buttering my own roll, feel free to pick it up with the very same gloves to help me out. I have a lot of personal pride, but I can assure you that you won't offend my dignity. In fact, I would like to meet the people at the governing level who came up with such an idea in the first place. I would have a few choice words for them on the subject.

The Nevada Regional Medical Center offers a lot of services to our community. It has become increasingly difficult for institutions like NRMC to continue to operate in the world of today.

There are new rules and regulations constantly being added to their difficult job of providing these services. Many of these new rules are good ones, but many make no sense at all. In fact they make it more difficult for the staff to provide good care.

I hope that the board and NRMC can find a way to deal with this new ruling. As for me, you can wear gloves while buttering my roll any time you want!