Family Strain, Institutional Pushback, and Professional Risk

Our conversation with the CEO and nursing director, neither of which had a direct hand in any of Granny’s day to day care but did hold final responsibility for the staff who did, was on February 14, 2020. We were cordial, but we were also very direct in detailing the twenty-plus falls in just three months leading up to that, how 75% of those had occurred in an eight-hour window with only three people available for 22 residents across two separate buildings, the falls that had not been reported, and several other care plan items they committed to that had not been fulfilled. We hoped that talking with them directly rather than filing an anonymous formal complaint to the state regulators would have been a show of good will; it was not received that way.

I already shared how that conversation ended so I won’t go there again. To be completely honest, I’m still a little pissed about that all these years later. They claimed to be better and they were very capable of providing better - for Granny and every other resident they were pillaging - but they chose not to do better. What I will share is that each interaction we had with anyone who had even the slightest bit of supervisory or management responsibility in that organization over the weeks that followed was strained, at best. Word had clearly traveled. Make no mistake, that didn’t bother me at all. The challenge came around March 12 when the buildings were locked down due to Covid and we could no longer check in routinely to maintain a reasonable level of accountability. Communication had already dropped off dramatically and that “social” distancing meant we could no longer keep an eye on the situation.

Watching a loved one go down hill as they age is hard enough. Having little impact on improving care, especially when you’re paying a premium for that care, adds strain in every aspect of a family dynamic. Add the apprehensiveness we experienced from everyone with the slightest bit of responsibility after bringing our concerns to their attention compounded it. And for good measure, add the idea of only being able to talk with that loved one through an iPad screen. Each of those individually is tough to deal with; combined, I don’t think “frustrated” begins to describe where we were.

Systems that fail the vulnerable amplify every previous pressure; controlling what we can control and choosing advocacy over silence should prevent deeper resentment and unlock cooperative strength, assuming everyone involved has good intentions. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. As great as that organization’s messaging was from the outside, we learned quickly that not everything that glitters is gold. We had heard some rumblings from former and the occasional current employees. After years in human resources and safety, I learned to trust but verify. Not only did those rumblings prove true, we had a front row seat for watching how toxic a situation can become when folks are more focused on putting on a good show than doing the good work to back it. We address that in Stage 4 of each Advantage series pillar: saying one thing publicly and doing something far different internally. The institutional pushback that followed added even more family strain but it spilled over into several business relationships as well. 

Throughout Leveraging Leadership Growth, I shared the many things I’ve been blessed to learn from so many great mentors over the years. As much as anything else I learned from Terry Ward and Rod Little, I learned that standing my ground on principle doesn’t have a price tag. We’ll look at how a deep understanding of that grows when you’re in the thick of it next. Now, though, I’ll challenge you to think about a situation where you’ve had to advocate for someone you cared about. What pushback came your way as a result? What did you learn from that and which one of the leadership attributes we’ve been looking at through this process did it help you strengthen?