The woman looked at me and said, This place is like a prison; I am not coming back here. I looked at the place and from the outside and sometimes from the inside, the place looked pretty inviting, not homey but inviting. I knew that most of the staff was pleasant, friendly and somewhat professional. Though I was not affiliated with the place, I did have the opportunity to see inside the building and to notice what happens inside. I really wondered why she thought it was like a prison but I did not want to talk it over for hours as I was planning to have a pleasant day, peaceful, thinking on beautiful, serene things. Yet, her words kept haunting me. Why should those words haunt me and you? They should haunt us because with one stroke of fate, you or I or both of us can land in that place accidentally and then we two will discover what the place is really like inside, when the visitors leave, when the witnesses leave. What is a nursing home like when you have to live there as opposed to being there only as a visitor?

Well, here are some things that make residents and patients feel like they are in prison:

* Most of the residents, if they are wheelchair-bound, are literally bound from going where they want to go, when they want to go. They have so many time restrictions due to that there are not enough staff members to take them where they want to go to.
* This particular place even has restrictions on their clothing; prisoners do also. Prisoners have to wear the clothing that is given to them by the state or federal government. Residents in nursing homes are restricted to wear the clothing that the facility does not lose or to clothing that people from the outside bring to them because most of them cannot go shopping on their own. They need to get special passes to go out of the building.
* They are not free to come and go as they please, even though that might be their permanent home. Can you imagine being a grown person and needing to ask if you want to go outdoors and then when you ask you are told you need a pass, a special pass that needs to be signed by the nurses or social workers?
* In some facilities, the residents cannot even go from one floor to the next floor without an aide or person accompanying them. If they want to use the vending machines or if they want to go to the auditorium or go to activities, there is one rehab and care center that has elevators that are not wheelchair accessible in the fact that people in wheelchairs cannot reach the elevator buttons. They need someone to be in the elevator to press the buttons for them. So even if a resident does not need an aid because they are physically independent but need the wheelchair to help, this resident cannot be free to go to the lobby or other floors without asking an aide to help them.
* When they ask for help or an aid to accompany them somewhere in or out of the building, most times, the staff is never available. The residents have to wait and wait and wait and wait until finally, maybe, someone might be able to help them, maybe. And that is a very big maybe, because most times, they just wait and wait and then give up on going where they want to go.
* Everything they want to do is accompanied by a pass or written instructions or special rules. That is not a home, that is more like a prison. Residents need to get approval for practically anything and everything, including going to the restroom. Imagine really having to go to a restroom and needing to wait and wait and wait till someone comes to get you?


There are two million ways that bad rehab centers and nursing homes and EVEN good nursing homes are so much like prisons. They are more like prisons than prisons are. There are some prisons where the inmates have so much more freedom than nursing home residents have and that is the absolute truth. Do not doubt that for one moment. So could you even imagine, working your whole life so that you can have a good retirement life and then ending up in a place that has less freedom than your average prison has? No. You probably could not even imagine that , correct?

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