Can a Nursing Home Publicize a Suspension?

[Tweezer93]

can a nursing facility publicize a suspension?

[color=#336699]an lpn in ocala, fl has been suspended by the nursing home that she works for due to allegedly failing to report suspected resident abuse. the alleged abuser (a housekeeping employee) has been terminated, authorities are investigating, and the resident is receiving the appropriate assessment and treatment.

but the abuse is not the only questionable act to come out of this facility.

why is it public knowledge that this nurse has been suspended pending investigation? it has always been my practice to protect, to the best of my ability, any employee involved in an investigation that could jeopardize their professional well-being. our judicial system is based on an innocent until proven guilty premise, and an abuse investigation should follow a similar path.

if you were issuing a written warning to an employee for a timeclock violation or smoking in the parking lot, you wouldn't post a memo in the breakroom letting everyone know that this person had been "written up." you wouldn't tell the cook and ask them to tell everyone else. discipline is intended to be educational, not punitive. work in this mindset and there is no value in other employees knowledge of the action.

it is not always feasible to protect the identity of an employee under investigation from other employees and residents, but that should be the goal. using names and specifics are ultimately unavoidable in an effective investigation, and confidentiality is easily compromised the second an employee leaves your office. an investigation conversation should never begin with leading questions such as "have you ever seen john perkins abuse a resident?" this not only immediately implicates the employee (regardless of their guilt) but also takes all objectivity away from your investigation. remember, the goal of an investigation is to find the root cause of a problem, not to determine who is guilty.

i can't answer why this lpn's suspension hit the ocala papers. perhaps it was a leak, perhaps an upset family, or perhaps the facility made it public knowledge. we won't blame the facility. but the question has to be asked, "why haven't we set standards for abuse investigations?" i guarantee that my facility measures are different from yours, and what you do to protect the resident and determine the root cause of the occurrence is different from the guy down the street. i propose that we begin to work on an industry standard for this situation. doing so would not only formalize the procedure for long term care professionals; it would also tell the consumer exactly what our industry was doing every time that abuse was reported to facility administration.

let's use this current situation as an opportunity to examine our protocols for conducting fair investigations. as often as these situations arise, it is only fair to our residents and employees to treat each situation equally, protecting identities and reputations instead of just looking for someone to blame.

[Freedom42]

If you read the original story, it doesn't appear that the nursing home did "publicize" the incident. A nursing home administrator prepared a report about what allegedly happened, and another administrator turned it over to police. The reporter probably found out about it by going through a stack of incident reports -- routine for me when I was on the beat -- and reading the subsequent police report, which also outlines what allegedly happened.

The original story also makes it clear that the worker who witnessed the alleged assault immediately reported it to the supervisor. It's the supervisor who's accused of delaying the report to administrators, who supposedly called police as soon as they found out about it.

[TazziRN, RN]

So was the LPN suspended the witness or the supervisor?

[Freedom42]

The supervisor.

[Tweezer93]

Well, like I said, there's no intention of blame in my argument, just using the occurrence to point out the shortcomings of many abuse investigations.

You certainly wouldn't want your name associated with a negative incident whether you were "guilty" or not. And I always am careful to not use a "guilty vs. not-guilty" approach. How often do we find a bruise of unknown origin on a resident that consequently has nothing to do with abuse?

All food for thought. I'm just glad that if there was wrong-doing that the resident is now protected.

[Antikigirl, ASN, RN]

I don't know the legalities of it, but I know the last place I worked threatened employees of doing just that very thing if we screwed up! Nice huh? Guess in Oregon it is legal, and our BON memos that come have the names of all suspended or disaplined RN's, LPN's and CNA's on there, what they are accused of, and even updates! Scared the heck out of me as a new nurse when I saw them!

In addition, if you are found to have a criminal probelm like DUI, domestic disturbance, or what not...it is also put in the BON memos! And some local papers do the same and yes..they mention your employement!

Scary stuff!!!!!!! I don't need my life to be an open book like that...I deal with the public to help, all they need to know is that I passed all criminal background checks via my employer to take on the job, and I am clean as a whistle!