When the 911 call comes from inside the nursing home, health care workers are sometimes the victims.
A couple of years ago, the trickle became a flood. Christina Lockyer-White had long known that the skilled nursing facility where she worked in Bakersfield was receiving more mental health patients than it previously housed but, after the pandemic, those numbers appeared to skyrocket.
“We’re seeing more and more mental health [patients] coming in my building,” said Lockyer-White, a 20-year certified nursing assistant. “They are younger. Many of them are homeless. When I started as a CNA, we had more dementia patients or people who needed rehab after a stroke — some kind of skilled nursing need, for which we all have trained.”
These new patients require a different level of care, claims Lockyer-White, who adds that their mental health issues are often intertwined with drug addiction. They act out, sometimes violently: “We began to come to work every day knowing we were going to get verbally abused. I’ve seen nurses get hit.”
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