Nursing Home Blog
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The Problem with Deodorizers
Posted on Mon, December 1, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Before choosing a nursing home, I strongly suggest that thorough tours of prospective homes are part of your due diligence. I also recommend that you print and take our Nursing Home Tour Checklist that is posted on this website (see Checklist on the sidebar). As you will see, there are many points to consider and items to examine that will never have crossed your mind. One such example is a home’s use of fragrant deodorizers. Typically, a home uses a fragrant deodorizer to mask an unpleasant odour (such as an incontinent episode). Although this is completely understandable, the bigger issue can be the cause of the odour that is being masked. Excessive use of strong deodorizers can point to some potential problems in the home that we will discuss. Like any home, or even person, overuse of chemical fragrances might point to some serious cover-ups.
Certainly, some incontinent episodes will happen in a nursing home. Others can easily be prevented if nursing staff take the resident to the toilet at scheduled times, thereby giving the resident many opportunities to use the bathroom in a day. Further, nursing staff must have a continence program in place for those residents who have bowel or bladder problems and follow it. Such a program should be properly documented in your loved one’s care plan. Therefore, if there is a pervasive use of artificial deodorizers throughout a home, it leads to two obvious, and serious, questions: are residents getting to the bathroom regularly enough? Have the staff failed to identify that some residents are incontinent and not put a program in place?
Furthermore, in the event that a resident does have an incontinent episode, the odors tend to be absorbed into the floor the longer that the urine or feces remain there. However, if the nursing staff or housekeeping staff tend to the situation immediately, lingering odour will be minimal. Hence, the need for powerful fragrances to mask such situations should also be minimal. Overuse of chemical deodorizers may also point to an insufficiency in housekeeping staff, or generally poor organization of duties within the home.
My grandmother, who lives in a retirement residence, has bouts of incontinence and occasionally does not make it to the toilet in time. Consequently, she has accidents on the carpeted hallway outside the bathroom. As soon as I open the door to her room and am overwhelmed with a powerful deodorizer, I know what has happened. And this is at a retirement home where most residents are able to look after themselves, including getting to the bathroom. The same is not true of a nursing home. There, most residents require the aid of support staff. Personally, I do not prefer fragrances, especially those that are so strong, and would clearly not want to live in a room filled with such an artificial smell.
The bottom line is that I want you to realize that most questions on the checklist may seem trivial at first glance, but they may well signal much more serious concerns. The next time you are in a home that overpowers you with fragrances, take the time to do some further investigation.
If you have any questions about the checklist, or if you want a certain questions on the checklist explained, please e-mail me at admin@nursinghomeratings.ca
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