'What happened is a nightmare'

i live in toronto, so i know the nsg situation here...what "should" be done vs. what a nurse really has time to do are two totally different things.

first of all, the poor nurse on duty was probably run off her feet, barely had time to assess what was really going on when the first patinet was assaulted (hence the article said 'she changed his clothes'). that was probably all she could do and then run back to giving meds, giving baths, orders, whatever. no time to anticipate, really, in our hosptial system..there is literally NO TIME. no time, to sit and think about the big picture, call security, follow up w/ charge nurse. often on these complex cont. care floors there is NO charge nurse, only an MRN "the most responsible nurse" who has a caseload of her own, and no time to get into those kind of things unless there is a real emergency.

our government has taken most of the money out of the system for sitters for unsafe clients (due to aggression or frailty dementia or whatever) so even if the nurse had identified that the situation was unsafe there would be nothing more to be done except to 'monitor' the situation. prior to ~2001 sitters were commonplace on the wards.
obviously the man was mobile, so couldn't easily put him in a g-chair and keep him at the nursing station to keep an eye on him, and we can't just go ahead and use restraints. so this type of situation in a system that refuses to put any money for 'extras' is extremely difficult.

even getting security involved is hard--they have so many rules for what situations they will come for vs. when they dont and even when they do come, they don't help much with care of patient, if the patieint falls on the floor their union protects them they don't have to lift the patient up, its awful.

and in this situation, what about the fecal/urine mess that was created?? now, our custodians REFUSE to clean up any mess whatsoever that is human waste up off the floor or bedrails or anything. they say their union disallows it because they go from room to room and could pass along the material and spread infection, so nurses must clean the 'human waste' from the mess first before they even begin to clean it (this includes blood, vomitus, urine, feces, anything). i often wonder how they expect nurses to clean S--T up off the floor and still carry on with patient care and not spread infection. and what are we suppose to clean with?? towels and handsoap from the clean utility cupboard?

it just seems everyone else's work is protected except for nurses. more and more is put on our shoulders, now including security guarding and cleaning, and we are expected to take the blame for more and more all the time. so when it comes to casting blame, obviously the unnamed nurse now implicated in the lawsuit was the one on duty at the time. how conveninent to blame her in a system that does very virtually nothing to protect the role and work of the nurse.

sorry just venting, find this situation upsetting. thanks for listening!

I'm a working supervisor in Massachusetts in a medical facility ( think jr hosp)
we are sub acute/ and handle acute issues some long term, pre and post op
and rehab we have one locked unit for those who have severe dementia and may wander those nurses are not trained psych nurses nor are any of the cnas
and the nurse is alone from 7pm to 11 with 40 pts
I handle a medicare sub acute floor and handle all the bs in the building on evenings I have a ft co nurse the first unit is a combo of new admits, a few long term and precaution pts
you can't believe what the local hospitals dump on us and the don allows
we have more issues of pt to pt assaults, pt to nursing staff assults, we do section 12 some most are returned in several hours after a haldol iv vacation and finding out no psych units will admit them either no beds , not the proper insurance or the patient was calm and non threatening when being evaluated
hello.... red flags the pt knows what they are doing which should make it criminal assault but no one wants the media. nurses have few rights a male pt can make on going sexual remarks but if we tell them to stop and say it with anger we are at fault. we need real nurses lobbying for rights we need real time incident reports with on going support and not the don and admin worrying about dph in fact dph should be looking at the unrealistic admits, the drug seekers, etoh abusers the violent and the ones known for reporting workers and facilities for things like " my food is not what I expected" " the cnas are all brazilian I hate them" etc
a patient should expect great care, pain relief, wound healing, and a comfortable safe enviroment yet one of the first things they ask for is a tv remote

Well the problem with hospitals today is that they have a lot of staff in Senior Management positions and not enough front line workers.

I have worked in this particular hospital and I can tell you there was only one RN and one PSP per unit. Housekeeping was very scarce and they only mopped floors. However if you look at their Senior Management department (remember this is only a medium sized complex chronic care and rehab hospital) they have 2 CEOs, 5 VPs and 2 Chiefs of ....... That is ridiculous for a hospital that size.

Another thing, this hospital has a reputation for letting good people go (in many cases for no just reason) and paying them severance pay and then hiring other people in their place. You know how much of a money waster that is? I think the government should be more diligent in auditing the way hospitals spend their funding.

I think that these legal cases are good for these organizations as they sound an alarm to the outside as to what is really going on in these facilities.