Am I going crazy?

Nurses Professionalism

Published

Specializes in Assisted living/hospice.

I work in Assisted Living with various residents with various health issues. Some even have moderate dementia.  I have a resident that was experiencing un managed pain and had her pian med dosing changed x 3 times in 2 weeks. This is a independed resident who is considered a capable adult with no diagnosis of cognitive decline. However some minor age related cognitive decline present. I guess the pharmasist was conserned about the dosing and made a comment that if she took the med at this dose, she 'wouldn't wake up". Really stupid thing to say which caused her fear and anxiety.  

She self administers her own medication but became overwhelmed. Me being her primary nurse, I referred to supervisor possible med reminders/supervision due to anxiety, not confusion. 

So the lpn in charge of private pay residents goes onto her room and starts rummaging through her medications OTC  and prescribed asking, "what is this for?", "when did ypu get this, why, what Dr .......". Then I see in the charting that full med admin is going to be set up. 

The resident spoke to me and presented several concerns. She asked me if they need her consent, I said yes because that's the truth. It was obvious she did not agree to anything. When I brought up these concerns with the lpn who set this up, I tried to gently affirm this resident did not give consent. This lpn said she doesn't need it because the resident has "cognitive decline her " daughter is burned out" , and "they were all for it yesterday". I told her that the resident has more questions and would like to speak to her.  

This lpn did not follow up, pushed through the med admin set up and disregarded my concerns. 

Then resident ends up in hospital for unmanaged pain. While she was still there, the lpn with the "permission " of her daughter (not PC, not substitute decision maker) and removed all of her OTC medication and locked up all prescribed medication. This happened while resident was in hospital, without her permission and in her absence. 

Apparently the daughter tells this lpn that she want the ned admin but then tells me she was just wanting staff to admin pain meds. Also indicated that the lpn said they have no choice and she felt scolded by this lpn to sigh the papers. (Resident didn't sign anything). 

When the resident came back from hospital, she found someone went into her private locked suite, went through her personal spaces and removed and/or locked up her medication. This has caused great distress and now she is fearful to leave her suite in case someone comes in and "violates" her again. 

I've gone to other management and they say the "daughter is burned out". I affirmed that I'm empathetic to this however our duty is to advocate for the resident and removing her autonomy and independence because the daughter is "burned out" is not appropriate.  

Am I crazy or is this a major violation of consent? Especially the entering of her suite without permission? 

Note, each day level goes up $700 so money is most likely part of the factor. 

I'm ready to go all the way up the chain to advocate for this lady. 

 

 

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