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Grey, Black and Blue

The statistics

Incident reporting rules vary greatly from province to province, so comparisons across the country are difficult. But in Ontario alone, the number of assaults between nursing home residents has tripled over a three year period:

  • 2003 - 446 assaults
  • 2004 - 864 assaults
  • 2006 - 1415 assualts

On average there are now four attacks reported every day in Ontario. The Ontario government's own documents reveal that one in five nursing home residents is now considered "highly aggressive."

There have been almost twenty resident-to-resident homicides in Ontario nursing homes in the past 10 years. The assailants have been as young as 35 and as old as 92.

For almost 15 years Ontario’s coroners have made dozens of recommendations, warned about violence and urged the government to protect the elderly from aggressive residents.

In 2005, after an inquest into the beating death of two long term care residents the Ontario coroner for geriatric and long term care made 85 recommendations. Most have not been implemented. Here's a link to the coroner's report from that inquest.

October 17, 2007
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Comments - Share your thoughts

I have worked at a private 'retirement' residence for a number of years and am counting the days until I can leave. I wouldn't recommend this type of work to anyone. All I see is their rent increasing while the quality of care, food, housing etc. continues to plummet. It's all about the almighty dollar. That is exactly why we can have any type of physical or behaviour problem in our care. And the staff are NOT made aware of the problems. I have residents, frail elderly ladies as well as senior men, telling me they are fearful of other residents. At times it is difficult to reassure them, when I have some fears myself. Being a senior does not take away the ability to be threatening, either verbally, physically or sexually. Until our government wakes up and admits there is a difference in peoples' mental and physical capacities, and there is a difference between males and females and there is a difference between young and old - and it is NOT discrimination - can we truly start to begin rebuilding. Regulations are far too lax and it will not change until attitudes change. Those in power, from top to bottom, have to get their priorities straight and put people before the almighty dollar. Posted by: Gwen | Oct 18, 07 09:40 AM
I work in a Long Term Care home and there is resident to resident abuse in LTC homes and resident to employee. I've been fearful of some resident outbursts. It happens suddenly before you have time to protect yourself. I've seen residents go into another residents room and start striking at them. One resident who was hit by a co-resident and suffered a broken hip from her fall. It's out there. The Ministry has to do something about this. Posted by: Jessie | Oct 18, 07 11:23 AM
my 48 yr. sister has seen the abuse that you reported about on your program. Staff do nothing, as it is just acceptable. More importantly, is the PSYCHOLOGICAL abuse she endures from the staff. The facility is understaffed all the time, and many staff are not trained adequately, or leave very quickly. She lives in fear and anxiety daily, and I worry all the time. Posted by: colleen | Oct 18, 07 03:52 PM
Wow! I just watched the documentary and that is really scary. I don't even want to go there in my mind as I am a 63 year old widow who has very little family contact and we never know when we will be that person who has to enter a long term care facility. Smitherman's reaction is typical of government bureaucractic B.S. Heartless. That would finish me off if something like that ever happened to me. It is so cruel to even think a loved one is living in this kind of conditions in their golden years. I know a 67 years old who went into one of these facilities and read her obituary in local newspaper yesterday. I do not know the details but it certainly is enough to shorten your quality of life and shorten life span in conditions as anxiety ridden as this. Posted by: Kathryn MacLeod | Oct 20, 07 08:25 PM
I work in a Long Term Care Facility and it takes great courage to go to work everyday. The workload is heavy, the care for the residents are heavy (since hospital wants to discharge patient ASAP and some of them not ready to be discharged) and family/residents know their rights and every minute we are threatened to be reported to the Ministry. There is 1 RN to 32 residenta for Days and Evenings and 1 RN to 144 at night. On top of our Nursing duties such as giving out medication and doing treatments, calling doctor and caring out doctor's order, we are also the secretary - the one to answer phone calls (it rings every other minute), to file all the records, to order supplies, we are the administer - to listen to and find out solutions for numerous complaints, (customers always right but most of them are cognitive impaired), to supervise HCA. We are the police force - to separate potential abusive residents from running into each other, to prevent exit-seeking residents from leaving the Floor, to ensure chain smoker gives you back their cigerettes and lighter each time after they smoke (God knows they smoke every other 15 minutes). We are also the waitress in the Dinning Room, make sure residents are served and have a pleasant dinning atmosphere. We are burnt out and cannot focus on our job to give best nursing care to residents. At any given time, there seems a million things you have to handle and it always feels like it's only you working. We are very under staff (compare to hospital which 1 RN has 4 patient?) People tend to live longer nowadays, some has medical problems to deal with on top of getting old. For the past 10 years that I worked in a Nursing Nome, I found the stress to work has never been this high but the morale has hit the bottom low. It doesn't help that our minister is blind and without any insight of what is really going on and absolutely no vision in how to fix the problem. Posted by: RN | Oct 21, 07 09:13 PM
As I watch your video I can't help but think that the "laws" are to blame for a lot of the resident to resident abuse. How would you like to be locked in a unit day in day out wandering the same halls seeing the same faces everyday. Here we have central air so we are not allowed to open windows. We have a patio for the unit but because of the risk factor for falls the doors are not to be opened unless staff can be present. But we do not have enough staff to surpervise residents. So they are not getting fresh air. Management decided that TV programs were not "suitable" for the residents so they canceled the cable, and brought in videos (children's videos). These people are not children. Yes, sometimes they revert back to their childhoods but they deserve to be treated as adults. The frustration that these people must feel (and usually cannot express the way we can) must be tremendous. Unfortunately the people who suffer are the other residents and staff. Posted by: lynne | Oct 24, 07 12:53 AM
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