Building a nonprofit nursing home facility in Liberia

¶ … Nursing Home in Liberia

In the past, the need for nursing home facilities in Liberia was small because the culture demanded that immediate family members care for the elderly and given the relatively short life expectancies involved, few people lived long enough to require such care in formal institutional settings. Things are changing in Liberia, though, and improvements in healthcare and a reinvigorated economy following the cessation of a bloody civil war in 2003 indicate that more people are going to be living longer lives and will require the services provided by assisted care living facilities in the future. This paper outlines the plans for building such a project in Liberia, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Mission

The mission of the plan envisioned herein is to build a small 50 bed -- nonprofit nursing home facility in Liberia by 2019 (see map at Appendix A). The country does not currently have any such nursing home facilities. The construction of a nursing home facility in Liberia, though, can help the nation's elderly live longer and more fulfilled lives through the provision of timely and modern healthcare services and the provision of a nurturing environment that might not be otherwise available because of the devastation caused by the bloody civil wars that have wracked the nation in recent years, leaving many elderly without immediate family members who can care for them. As part of the mission of this plan, some of the specific steps that would be taken to ensure that the healthcare services delivered in the nursing home remained current and congruent with best practices in healthcare administration by following the accreditation criteria for such facilities established in other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Environment

Liberia's Constitution is identical to the U.S. Constitution and the country even uses U.S. currency as its medium of exchange. The similarities between Liberia and the more affluent U.S. end there, though. In this regard, Takahashi (2008) reports that Liberia is ". . . A small country on Africa's western coast with a population of about 3.5 million people, was founded by freed American slaves early in the 19th Century and declared independence in 1847. But much of its legacy in the West is related to the brutal string of civil wars that began in 1989 and left more than 200,000 dead and created 15,000 child soldiers" (p. 2). As a result of these events and the economic stagnation that followed, the unemployment rate in Liberia is a staggering 85% with an 11.2% inflation rate (Liberia, 2009). Other problems affecting the country today include the need for increased transparency and elimination of corruption in the national government and improved governance to attract private investment (Takahashi, 2008).

Tactics

Given the current reluctance of the international community to make substantive investments in Liberia, the short-term tactics used to achieve the above-stated goals would require an aggressive public relations campaign to raise awareness among potential donor countries of the need for a nursing home facility in Liberia and the positive outcomes that could result. Assistance would also be solicited from accrediting agencies such as the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in the United States to provide guidelines that should be followed in recruiting and training staff members and what factors should be addressed in facility design to ensure the safety and comfort of the elderly residents. Finally, a series of grant applications would be prepared and submitted to as many foundations as possible to gauge reactions and fine-tune the application process for future submissions.

Monitoring

Measuring the effectiveness of the funding received will be a fairly straightforward approach to monitoring the effectiveness of the grant application process, but there are other variables that can serve as metrics as well, including the percentage of beds filled in the nursing home, the turnover rate among staff and the number of patient-related incidents such as falls that occur. By keeping track of these statistics and developing trending graphs, problem areas can be identified and acted upon before they threaten the viability of the initiative.

Risk Factors

The same cultural forces that hold the elderly in Liberia in high regard may adversely affect the ability of the nursing home facility envisioned herein to attract a sufficient number of residents. For example, according to Bray (2009), "The story is Liberians really care about the elderly because in Africa the elders stay with the family and are deeply respected. They play with the grand children and then they pass away right there in the home" (p. 3). In addition, resources for such an enterprise will be difficult to secure without the intervention of a nongovernmental organization such as the United Nations given the continuing stark economic conditions in Liberia today. There are also significant communications problems in Liberia, with almost all of the landline telephone services being restricted to in and around the nation's capital, Monrovia. Cellular telephone service is becoming increasingly commonplace even in rural areas, though, but Internet access remains sparse with just 2,000 Internet users in the entire country (Liberia, 2009).

Conclusion

The research showed that Liberia is a relatively small nation in West Africa with a population of approximately 3.5 million people. The research also showed that Liberia has experienced a series of bloody civil wars in recent years that have left its economy and population in disarray. Despite the cultural forces at work in Liberia that place a high regard on the elderly, the deaths of tens of thousands of younger Liberians have created a situation where an increasing number of elderly citizens in this country may not enjoy the family resources they need to live their lives out in comfort and safety. In this environment, the nursing home initiative describes above represents a timely and valuable enterprise that will serve as a model for other such projects throughout the country in the years to come.