Ahimsa’s Role in Nursing Care

My letter is a response to the article about Ahimsa Care Facility in Laguna Beach (“State Health Department Cites Ahimsa Center,” Nov. 21). For the past three years, I have been a frequent visitor to Ahimsa Nursing Home in Laguna Beach, primarily to visit friends in the terminal stages of AIDS.

I have visited Ahimsa at various times of the day and evening. I have eaten numerous times there. I have bathed friends using the Ahimsa facilities. I have been involved with patient care. I have talked with the administration, and I have prayed there.

I feel very qualified to speak with authority about Ahimsa as a care facility. I have observed only kindness, patience and courtesy extended toward patients. The nursing and administrative staff are professional and caring as they administer their duties.

The place is kept very clean. The meals are warm, nutritious and appetizing. Even as one enters the doors, one feels a warmth and decency about the place.

In my lifetime, I have had to place both my father and my grandmother in care facilities, so I am acutely knowledgeable of their service and quality. I would not hesitate to place a loved one at Ahimsa and, indeed, would feel fortunate to have a place in a care facility as decent as Ahimsa.

Some people who visit a care facility are immediately overcome with negativity because they are forced to see people in pain, people who are confused and people who are in the terminal stages of disease.

I see the professional and kind workers at Ahimsa deal each day in a positive and loving manner making the last days of our loved ones as decent, dignified and human as they possibly can. They deserve our praise and thanks. It is a hard job.

PHILIP R. ALLES, Los Angeles