[NRSKarenRN]

AP/Yahoo!, Jan. 10, 2005

Los Angeles hospital suspends nurse after death

A patient died at the troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after an ICU nurse ignored her worsening condition and alerted doctors only after the woman went into cardiac arrest, Los Angeles County health officials say.


I'm highly suspicious of this facilities nurse to patient ratios. Are there central monitors? Monitor Techs? Who's minding the unit??

Heart goes out to the nurses at this facility tryng to do their best with limited resources.

[oramar]

Sometimes I think that a license is just something for administration to hide behind. They can allow imposible situations that will surely lead to deaths run on until bad something happens. Then they just look for the nearest licensed person to blame it on and continue on there merry way.

[oncbsnrn]

Originally Posted by oramar

Sometimes I think that a license is just something for administration to hide behind. They can allow imposible situations that will surely lead to deaths run on until bad something happens. Then they just look for the nearest licensed person to blame it on and continue on there merry way.

For the most part, we are a group of bright and highly competant nurses. However, there are nurses who don't practice safely. If this article is accurate, some of these practices are not because of nurse patient ratio's or being overworked, they are because this nurse did not give a damn! For example:

"Alarms on the patient's vital-signs monitor were either turned off or lowered before she died Nov. 18" and....

allegedly failed for nine hours to request blood for a transfusion, and.....

She also falsified records to indicate she had checked the woman's vital signs, by obtaining the patient's file after her death, inserting notes, and then lying about doing so and her co-worker......

a different intensive care nurse turned down the audio alarm on a 28-year-old man's monitor and then failed to notice the patient's heart was barely beating, officials said. That nurse is accused of falsifying the patient's medical records and indicating he was stable more than an hour after he died.

[pickledpepperRN]

From the LA Times in January 2004. I typed some sections because it is no longer available on line. This is just part of the article that was posted here last year.

I hear this hospital is mostly staffed with travelers now. I know many licensed have left saying, “I can’t afford to risk my license working there.”
Report Assails Hospital Lapses
U.S. inspectors find that King/Drew nurses were ordered to lie and key drugs weren't given. Criminal inquiries could be launched.
------------------------------------------
January 30, 2004

Nurses at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center were ordered to lie about patients' conditions, failed to give crucial medications prescribed by doctors and left seriously ill patients unattended for hours — including three who died — according to a new report by federal health officials.

Government inspectors have now identified five patients who died at King/Drew last year after what were determined to have been grave errors by staff members, and the findings could trigger criminal investigations into possible misconduct by the nurses and their supervisors….

… Nurses told inspectors, for instance, that their supervisors had ordered them to downplay the conditions of critically ill patients to subvert rules requiring that the sickest patients get more nursing care….

… Inspectors also found serious and unusual ethical breaches that deprived the most critically ill patients of adequate care.

"Confidential interviews revealed that nursing staff were prohibited from assigning patients a classification of IV," the most critical level of sickness, the report said….

… As a result, inspectors said, nurses sometimes struggled to care for four times as many patients as the state allowed. Crucial medications and treatments were often delayed for hours. Nurses also did little to help patients who were in severe pain, according to the findings.

On one shift reviewed by inspectors, nine of the 16 patients should have been classified at the sickest level, which would have required one nurse for every two patients.

One patient was bleeding and required multiple transfusions, five required ventilators to aid their breathing and one of those patients had a temperature as high as 104 degrees, inspectors found. Four more patients were waiting to be admitted from the emergency room.

Yet there were only two registered nurses assigned to the unit — one for every eight patients, according to the report. One less skilled licensed vocational nurse, though not qualified for the task, was left to watch the cardiac monitors. When nursing administrators were asked for help, they told the nurses on duty that no help was available, the report said….

The employee assigned to watch the monitors "had not notified the nurse prior to being alerted by the patient's family" that the man's heart had stopped, according to the report. The Times reported this patient's death last month.

Even after this death, the hospital still did not ensure that employees in 4B were trained to use the monitors or were even paying attention, inspectors found.

When inspectors visited King/Drew on Dec. 23, the nurse assigned to watch the cardiac monitors told them she "did not feel comfortable" with use of the devices. Her employee file also lacked proof that she had been trained to operate them or spot abnormal heart rhythms, the report said.

While inspectors spoke to the nurse, the monitors for all six patients in 4B showed a red X next to the "pulse" read-out.

None of the three nurses in 4B at the time knew the X meant that the alarm, designed to alert them to dangerous dips in patients' heart rates, was off….

[Angie O'Plasty, RN]

That hospital ought to be sued for fraud.

[mattsmom81]

They will just blame the nurses like they always do.

[oncbsnrn]

[quote=spacenurse]From the LA Times in January 2004. I typed some sections because it is no longer available on line. This is just part of the article that was posted here last year.

I hear this hospital is mostly staffed with travelers now. I know many licensed have left saying, “I can’t afford to risk my license working there.”
Report Assails Hospital Lapses
U.S. inspectors find that King/Drew nurses were ordered to lie and key drugs weren't given. Criminal inquiries could be launched.
------------------------------------------
January 30, 2004

Nurses at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center were ordered to lie about patients' conditions, failed to give crucial medications prescribed by doctors and left seriously ill patients unattended for hours — including three who died — according to a new report by federal health officials.

This is sickening. Why hasn't this place been closed down? Is it the only "healthcare" facility in that area?

[SmilingBluEyes]

Ah yes, there ya go, Fire the nurse, conscience and record clear, right? What I don't get is why a nurse would listen when told to lie on a chart or in court.......It's a shame. That place really does need to GO. What a horror house.

[oramar]

It is disgraceful that nurses in supervisory postions go along with thing like that. They and criminal bully CEOs should go to prison.

[stbernardclub]

OK, we all understand that this hospital is wrong, but my question is why would a nurse take a assignment that she is incabable of doing? eg: why are you watching a monitor that you cannnot understand? Why would you be in a intensive care unit if you cannot monitor vitals, read labs, follow physician orders?