Paris nursing home facing staff shortage

Paris, Ky. (WTVQ) — The state of Kentucky is seeing a shortage of nursing homes due to minimal rooms and staff available.

According to data most older people prefer to receive care in their own homes. And nursing staff are paid more to work at someone’s home causing a shortage of staff in nursing homes.

Jeff Stidam, Executive Director of Bourbon Heights, spoke about how they are facing this shortage in their own facility.

“We have experienced that here at bourbon heights,” said Stidam. “As a matter of fact, all across the board. We have a shortage in our nursing staff, in nurses and in our cna’s, kma’s. We’ve had to use agenices to fill spots.”

While this is one of the worst shortages they have seen, they have been fortunate to not be short staff on the floor. This is due to hiring staff through agencies.

Donna Bussell, an LPN, has been working at Bourbon Heights for nine years.

She says that even with the help of agencies, she is still having to do extra work.

“You have to get out there,” said Bussell. “You’ve got your nursing that you have to do, but you also have to be out there and picking up where the agencies. You know people may not know everything that’s done for the residents. Plus what we have as protocols and standards here at bourbon heights that are expected to be done.”

And this extra work makes it harder for nursing staff to provide the same quality of work as before.

“It gets you upset trying to do the best that you can for these people,” said Bussell. “I mean you take that oath and you become a nurse to do that. You know it takes a certain amount of people to get the job done.”

Bussell believes that unless these staff members start getting paid more, this shortage will continue.

We reached out the Kentucky Association of Health Care Facilities. Executive Director Betsy Johnson told us that 12 nursing homes have closed across the commonwealth since 2020. They believe due to the stress in the nursing facility profession.

KAHCF believes more closures will take place in the future.