Long Term Care Facility has 5 nurses and roach infestation

Specialties Geriatric

Published

I am a registered nurse in a long term care facility and I am sickened of what I see every night I work. I take care of 48 residents. I have 2 certified nurse aides working with me. My gripes are as follows:

Floor nurses consist of:

1 full time RN

2 part time RN's

2 LPN's

We work 12 hour shifts. I have walked into residents rooms and reached for their breathing treatment machines and watch 10 roaches scatter. Roaches in the residents restrooms, roaches on the walls, and it just sickens me. If those roaches are in the machines and on the walls, they have to be in the beds and everywhere else. Of course management knows there are roaches, they tell me to watch my head for falling roaches when I am in so and so's room. :banghead:

I walk into a residents room to do a bandage change and find out that I was the last one to do the treatment 2 days ago when it should have been done by every shift. :banghead: Oh... and the other nurses marked on the tx sheet that they have done the treatment! My initials are on a 2 day old bandage!! MY orifice! :banghead:

A resident asks me how many times she gets her eye drops after having eye surgery. I look at the MAR and tell her 5 times a day. She tells me that I am the only nurse giving her the drops. Again the other nurse has signed off as giving the drops 3 times during the day. :down:

I am about ready to call the state. How can a company run such a place? I am at a loss. I don't want to quit because the residents tell me I am the only nurse who listens and cares, but what happens when I get burned out? :(

Some advice please???!!!!

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If the conditions are truly as bad as you describe you have a legal and ethical obligation to report. But be prepared for the "you know what" to hit the fan. Hopefully others can give you more specific advice. By the way, do you have ? Sounds like a great place to lose your licence...

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You must have patience out of this world :bow:. I totally understand wanting to stay for the patients. It seems that you are the only one who is taking and giving good quality care. But the roach infestation!!!! H-E double L hockey sticks NO!!! :nono: Roaches?!?!?! Is the state doing any inspections on this place? Have families of patients complained about the conditions? This is a horrible work environment and tragic the patients are being treated in such horrid conditions. i pray that things work out for you and your patients.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Tele, DOU.

Okay, I was doing fine with the beginning of the title of the 5 nurses bit; however, roaches?!!!! :nono: No no no!!!! That is not goodat all. :no: No one should have a roach infestation, except perhaps the waste management site outside of city limits.

:trout: And wait, some nut head from administration told you to watch out for the roaches falling from the ceiling in so-in-so's room. :no::no::no:

:barf01:That is absolutely nasty, and violates basic human decency much less OSHA, JCAHO, State Regulations, etc, etc, etc. . . .

I think you should take some "personal time off" to umm . . . look for alternate employment while you report this situation to whomever you want. Unfortunately, It appears that you have several agencies to choose from.

And to add to the roaches, lousy nurses :banghead:. Laziness absolutely burns my keester. I don't mind dis-organization or poor time management, but laziness . . . . :down:

:redlight:

Please take care of yourself, and get out of there pronto. It isn't safe for the patients or you. It sounds from your post that you take pride in the care that you provide for your patients. Please find another team in another facility who is also willing to take pride in the care that they provide for their patients.

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Specializes in CAMHS, acute psych,.

Report them - but wait - make sure you can back up what you are complaining about - keep a journal and make specific notes every day for a week or so - days, times, rooms, residents.

I don't know about the - I'm in a different country.

Leave as soon as you can after making the report - it would be handy if you had another job to go to, first - maybe you could job hunt while you are creating your evidence journal.

You must get out to protect yourself. You cannot save the residents.

Since you care about this (many don't) why not inspect the next facility before you sign on? I'm surprised you didn't see that there was something wrong with this place the first time you walked through the door for your job interview.

Good luck in fighting the good fight

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Specializes in Case Mgmt, Anesthesia, ICU, ER, Dialysis.

Get out while you can, and call the state!!!

You do know about medicare.gov, right? Where you can view all the survey reports of every state-certified facility??

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

We work 12 hour shifts. I have walked into residents rooms and reached for their breathing treatment machines and watch 10 roaches scatter. Roaches in the residents restrooms, roaches on the walls, and it just sickens me. If those roaches are in the machines and on the walls, they have to be in the beds and everywhere else. Of course management knows there are roaches, they tell me to watch my head for falling roaches when I am in so and so's room. :banghead:

:barf01: :barf01: :barf01:

Seriously, run, don't walk, to whatever agency oversees LTFs in your state. All your management can offer is to try to dodge the roaches as they fall into your hair???? How does this even happen? A helluva lot of people have to be looking the other way for it to get that bad. Sorry you've had to endure something like that. If you can't get any response in traditional ways, local TV news is usually interested in a visual of cockroaches crawling around patient areas.

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LTC is much different than hospital work. The roaches I would have a problem with!! The other things sound like every day life in LTC. Calling the state wont get much done. Unless they find the bandages marked several day ago they wont do a thing. Even then it is not much. Same with the eye gtts. LTC patient loads create these problems. I can have as many as 60 resident in my care on a 2-10 shift. There is no way I can get everything done. I do the most important things first and go on from there. We are a 120 bed facility but are frequently short staffed. Supposed to have 3 nurses on 6-2 and 3 nurses on 2-10 and 2 nurses on 10-6. Now the company can afford 2 corporate jets, but they can't afford to find us more help. They have 21 homes in South Texas. Around here the most action comes when famalies start to complain. My advice for anyone looking for placment is see how often the staff is short. You want good care for your loved one look at the staffing ratio. Not what they tell you it will be, what is actually there. Should have one nurse for every 30-35 residents. Should have a CNA for every 12-15 residents. That's the minimum.

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Specializes in A myriad of specialties.
should have one nurse for every 30-35 residents. should have a cna for every 12-15 residents. that's the minimum.

:down:yeah, my experience in ltc has been similar(one nurse for 30-35 pts) without regard for the acuity of the patients. same goes for the cna to pt ratio(state mininums: on day shift it was 1:10, eve shift 1:15, noc: 1:25--they are still not acceptable ratios in my opinion!!). the ratios are the main reason i left ltc....those ratios created unsafe working conditions.

the roach infestation is totally horrific; no reason for such conditions. the op needs to report the conditions and leave that place now.

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Instead of calling the state why don't you ask someone to call an exterminator? Keeping a journal won't get you anywhere with anyone. It might make you feel better but it could be construed as a work of fiction. I've never worked in a place as horrible as the one you described, but I have worked in places where nurses didn't do their treatments as ordered. Before I informed management, I saved one of the dressings, put it in an envelope and left it for the nurse with a note...something to the effect of you'd better get your treatments done because if I find this again, I will be reporting you. If someone told me to watch out for falling roaches I'd make sure an exterminator was called. I'd also probably be wearing a fly paper hat!

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. . . what, no Terminix, Roach Motels, nothing???

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Thanks for the replies. The facility has called an exterminator twice already in the last month. We are still experiencing a high volume of roaches..The DON came running out of her office yelling that there were a group of roaches attached to each other walking along her office floor! YUCK! and the facility got 7 violations on a recent survey. NOT GOOD.

I am currently searching for another job. I hate to leave the residents, but I have to think about myself for once. :)

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