hello to everyone, last week another aide and i were in a pt.'s room changing him, and his room mate came in. he is about early 70's and the only problem he has ,is beginning stages of dementa, w/short term memory loss. he likes to keep the over head light on, which keeps the other pt. awake all night(he has told the nurse this) so, for the last couple of weeks , we have been turning the bathroom light on, and leaving the bathroom door open, and drawing the other guys curtains. he has been fine with this. well on this night we again,explain to him(like we always do, well, he just flipped out!!! i was standing over the other guys bed and this man came up behind me and put his hands around my neck and started choking me, the other girl was rolling his head up, and she jumed up and said 'you can't be doing that' ,then he turned and went after her, hitting her in the face and upper body, well, i got up and got between them two ,blocking his blows, we were not close enough to the call bell(i was going to yank it out of the wall) so i just kept going in the direction of the door, all along yelling, he just kept hitting us both, and all we could do was block his blows, we got at the door, and i was yelling help,help. he got a hold of my left arm and grabed it and twisted it behind my back and pulled up on it really hard, it stopped me dead in my tracks, it hurt so bad. thats when the nurse came running down the hall, telling us to walk away, she said just walk away, of course, i couldn't move. i was in so much pain. he saw her, and turned around and walked back in his room.
i was already on light duty ,from a earlier work-related injury. i have 2 bulging disc in my lower back, l4-5 and l5-s1 plus, one in my neck c6-7 (so, i'm sure that really made the one in my neck better!)
we both filled out an incident report, i ended up going to the er the next day, thank god nothing was broke, just sprained, they put my arm in a sling. which really helped with the pain.
we were both really scared to come back to work the next day, the other girl ended up leaving early b/c she was crying pretty bad, they gave us a hard time, telling us it was part of the job. we are use to getting smacked, hit, spit on, cussed at, but never have we been beat up, this was totally different. it took 2 days for them to even call the doctor, they put him on zprexia(sp) which takes awhile to even get in the system.
they did call the doc back (after i threw a fit) and he has 1/2 mg for ativan prn. he's a pretty tall man, about 170-180lbs a half of mg hasn't even phase him. all they are going to do is watch him. we are not allowed to refuse to work with him. the next day, he went up to the other girl and asked her if she was one of the little devils that beat him up (short term memory??ya, right! ) he also came up to me and said he was sorry for what he did to my arm, i said ok, and then he said "but, you know you brought it on yourself" i said no, mr. *** i didn't. i got in trouble for saying that to him. all we want is, for him to be out of there. we are a nursing home. he takes care of himself. he does everything for himself, he gets a pension, and of course, i;m sure it's turned over to the nh. so they are getting all his money, and we do nothing for him.he needs to be in assisted living facility. what's wrong with this picture??
i live in virginia, can anyone tell me what are our rights as a cna?? we both feel like we are not being supported by our employer. it's just not fair. i have been searching the net for any info(that's how i found this wonderful board) i need some help, and just don't know where to go. i'm afraid they may fire me if i push this, but we did not do anything wrong here. sorry this is so long, but it felt good getting it out, you wouldn't belive how much stress this has caused us both. please, can someone help me. please pm me. thank you for listening!
