Story by Juliet Macdonald
Copy Editing by Jennifer Maddox, Ashley Reed, Cristy Smith, and Derek Wiley

TBN’s Juliet Macdonald interviewed Sharon Jones, the administrator of Westwood Nursing Center in Statesboro on Thursday March 1. She discussed what it is like to run a nursing facility, some of her belief about healthcare and why she got into the field in the first place.

Jones, 50, has been working in the healthcare field for 16 years. She joined Westwood as the administrator two years ago. She is a registered nurse and has been an administrator for 7 years. She entered the Healthcare field after her Father became ill and she took care of him in the home.

Sharon Jones, the adminstrator of Westwood Nursing center sits at her desk.

TBN: What is your job description and job title?
Jones: My job title is the administrator and that means that I am primarily responsible for the overall functioning of the entire facility. That includes every department in this facility. I do have department heads that work under me. They basically are primary supervisors in those departments and ultimately when the buck stops it stops here. That means if there is a problem in nursing or dietary or housekeeping, you know we gotta fix it. So I’m responsible for every resident in this building to make sure they get a quality care they so rightfully deserve. I am responsible for staff members working in this building to make sure that their work environment is a pleasant work environment as well, and that they get everything they need to work with so that we can provide quality care. So basically it’s like an engine, a well-oiled engine, you know. That’s why we call it team work in here. We just have to work as a team or it just doesn’t work. And it’s my responsibility to make sure that we do function as a team and that if one part of us doesn’t break, we hurry up and fix it.

TBN: What drew you to the field?
Jones: Actually, what drew me to the healthcare field to begin with was I had a sick father. My father died of cancer and I took care of him in the home and that is basically why I went into the healthcare field.

TBN: What types of things do you like about your job?
Jones: Well I like to….what I have been used to doing is sometimes I take nursing homes that maybe have had some sort of problems or some sort of troubles and then I come in and we basically get them turned around. So, in my career, I have been very successful, so far, in doing this and I really enjoy that. In this particular facility, per say, census was a big problem. I think census was in the 40s to low 40s [40 residents] in a 60 bed facility.

TBN: What does that mean?
Jones: We had fewer residents than we could accommodate. Now we’ve got 60 residents to occupy the beds and we’re at a full house today, and we basically maintain that at a hopefully to a 96 percent level. I try not to get below the 96 percent but sometimes we do. But, then, we try to get back in there. But anyway, we’ve been real good at keeping census up and that comes from basically changing what’s really inside by making sure we deliver good quality healthcare and go from there because it’s like what I told them when I first came in-- If we don’t fix what’s inside, how we gonna get the word outside? That’s what we have to do. We have to work on making sure policies and procedures that we have in place are being enforced and being followed and that good quality care is out there, that we take just as good care of our family members as we do of our residents. So that’s what we’ve had to do.

TBN: So do you judge nursing homes based on their occupancy? Is that a tell-tale sign of a nursing home functioning properly? What other signs?
Jones: Not always but certainly a good facility is going to basically at least maintain at least a 95 percent occupancy level because the words gonna be out there. I mean your survey results, of course, are there, too. You have state and federal surveys that kinda oversee what you are doing. Um…you know, so we do get audited. We are probably one of the most highly regulated fields in the healthcare industry, and we have to maintain loads and loads of regulations and we get inspected. We’ve had some good surveys. We try our best.

TBN: How many nurses do you have on staff?
Jones: We maintain two nurses and our nurses work 12 hour shifts. Two LPNs [Licensed practitioner nurses] for the day, two at night, and we have two RNs [registered nurses] that are in house. We have a treatment nurse and a MDS [MDS is in charge of the Minimum Data Set a required survey] nurse and then we have several CNAs [certified nurse assistants] that work here as well.

TBN: Are there any type of requirements as to what qualifications do you look for in the nurses you hire?
Jones: They have to be certified nursing assistants. They have to go through a program that they have to successfully complete before they are able to work here. And, of course, with the licensed staff, they have to be a licensed LPN or a licensed RN and basically their licenses have got to be maintained, in other words, with that restrictions and stuff like that.

TBN: What’s the hardest thing or things about your job?
Jones: The hardest thing is, there’s a lot of hard things about it. I guess, it’s kinda relinquishing [responsibility] ‘cause I’m not here all the time but I’m responsible 24/7 you know. So making sure I got the quality staff out there to make sure our residents are maintained with good quality care and safe environment-- things like that that’s going to be able to maintain this building in my absence, because, regardless of that, I’m responsible whether I am here or whether I’m not here. So it’s not like the thing I’m just responsible for me. I’m responsible for everybody and what everybody else does and what decisions they make in this building. So that can be hard sometimes if you know someone’s not really making a good decision; it can put you in a situation.

TBN: What are some examples of the changes you’ve made?
Jones: We have made a lot of changes in this particular facility, occupancy being one of them. We have also put more staff in this facility. There was one RN. Now, of course, we got one, because we recently had to have one resign because of sickness. But basically we have two RNs in this building. We just had two LPNs. I put a unit manager out there. We got a treatment nurse that has been put out there on a full time basis and a weekend treatment nurse. They hadn’t had that before. So we’re just adding more staff and we have Q A [Quality Assurance] team to make sure that things were getting done in the building.

TBN: How do people pay for nursing homes?
Jones: There is insurance. It’s more like managed care, HMOs and things like that-- very difficult sometimes to get paid through that type of thing. Primary source of income is gonna be through Medicaid and Medicare. That’s where our primary sources are, and then, of course, private pay.

TBN: Do you wish there was more funding for it?
Jones: I do. I absolutely do. I feel like the system is not really set up that it’s feasible and beneficial for everyone, but that’s another problem within itself. That’s not something that we are gonna be able to solve in one or two days. But, yes, I certainly do wish there were other options. Right now this is what we got and we got to make the most out of it. So, that’s what we try to do.