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Ahimsa’s Role in Nursing Care

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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.

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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.

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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

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