Oh yes, washing ones hands was frequent. The problem was that the home I worked at functioned more as a warehouse than a care facility. Constantly understaffed, often in trouble with the state. They constantly asked people to work extra shifts with promises of bonuses that did not come through half of the time. Finally one night there were three of us assigned to a unit with 29 residents. Both of the others who had much more experience than me (they were emergency agency hires, agencies had people that they hired out for at least twice our rate as emergency fill ins. I was the rookie in the bunch). anyway I was still optimistic. I said that we should be able to make it through the twelve hour shift if we worked together. But no sooner did we begin than the one female worker was taken away to work in our new "Covid positive wing". There was one nurse and one aid taking care of two people. An extremely light workload. Meanwhile the two of us were left in an area with 29 people. Most of whom took two people to change etc. Very early into our shift one woman who was "female care only" refused our care. There was not much we could do except to tell the nurse on duty about this. We did not have time to convince her that we only wanted to make her comfortable. So we went to work on the rest. Needless to say we fell behind. And yet we did not do too badly. When it comes to changing people BM's take precedence over wetting one's briefs and we did manage to keep on top of that, even though some were very time consuming.
When the next shift came on there were people that were not cared for properly. And we were told by them "we have to report this". Of course they did. At that point we were so burned out that we did not care much, though I still offered and stuck around to help them to catch up after twelve straight hours. My nurse, also my boss, reassured me that there should be no problem because she knew that we were working all night and she was going to write that up. Well it did not work. I was put on suspension for that night even though it was an impossible task. I would have complained but this coincided with me getting Covid. I might have got it that night since I had my weekend and was about to go back to work when I fell ill. I was about five minutes from calling in sick when they called me. I went back to work after my suspension, all forgiven. Told them that I had been ill and so of course they tested me. I was Covid positive, though I was over it by then. Back home for two more weeks. A couple of days later I was "let go". I told the supervisor how we were overwhelmed and she said "You two should have been able to handle 19 people.: That pissed me off, I told here that it was 29. She said "whatever". Ten people each is more than stretching the limit and is probably illegal by state standards. 15 each is insane.
At any rate I thought that was it. But that was not all. There was a state investigation. I did not know it but I was reported and investigated first. I did not know that I was reported until the state informed me that they had investigated me and found that I was not at fault. But that was not all. I was questioned a few times. It turns out that they were being investigated. Not just for what happened that night, but for the facilities general malfeasance. I finally found out about this due to a write up in the papers. The nightmare that I lived through was cited in the article of an example of how badly understaffed the place was. They through me under the bus because I was a the bottom of the totem pole and they had to sacrifice someone. It did not work.. The paper never talked to me. They had to get their example of how understaffed they were from the state investigator.
The facility ended up with a huge state fine and with possible federal fines to follow. I was vindicated, Which is nice, but it soured me on the field. One sad note that I found out from the newspaper article, a coworker, who I had only worked with a few times caught the virus too. She did not make it. We were both working together closely before we both came down with Covid. Who knows, one of us might have caught it form the other.
I could probably link the article if you want to read it.
