Ever been told to falsify documents?

[Poi Dog]

Last night I was told by the charge nurse. Her reasoning is that Medicare is threatening to close down the facility as a result of xyz not been performed. When did integrity take a flying leap? No wonder why Medicare is laying down the law. I cannot go into too much detail. But yeah, I was told that if I do not do xyz, that I should just chart it as being done. Wth?

Do I have stupid tattooed on my forehead? I am still surprised/disgusted that I was told to do that.

[CoffeemateCNA]

This happens at my facility. All. The. Time. They want CNAs to chart that we did nail care, ambulation, etc., every shift even though it just isn't possible (or even necessary) to do them that often. I only sign off on what I've done and told the higher-ups that they are welcome to sign their own names that those tasks were completed. We don't get reimbursed as much if I don't sign off on everything, but really, it's not my problem. Tasks *could* be done if staffing was better and if those staff actually worked together for a change.

[llg, PhD, RN]

At a major, prestigous university hospital ... many years ago.

I was asked to falsify 3 types of documents on a regular basis:

1. CPR training records. Some of senior staff members (friends of the Manager) didn't want to take the class

2. Standardized care plans for patients I had never seen

3. Blood transfusion records. The State Board strictly forbid LPN's from hanging blood -- but once again, our Manager had a few friends who were LPN's still working in our ICU. They would hang blood and then the RN's were expected to sign it off later.

I reported these things to the VP of Nursing, but she wouldn't do anything as the Manager had lots of seniority and consistently brought the department in under budget. I didn't stay there long. I found a better job somewhere else.

[caliotter3]

Most of the time personnel falsify charting without being asked to do so. Like it comes naturally when tasks are not completed.

[interceptinglight, CNA]

At my job we use hand-held computers to chart everything. For each person on our assigned hallway we are to check off the items from the care plan that were completed, even if they weren't. We also have to check off 'I certify that I have read and am following: " even though most of us don't have the time to read every single care plan during our shift. Whenever there's a new admit, the care plans can take days to update and often contain just a generic care plan profile that doesn't correspond to the resident, yet before our shift is over we better certify that we're following the bogus care plan that's in the hand-held. I complained about this to the DON and of course no response. Apparently honesty is not something that's rewarded where I work.

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

Ah, yes. The old, "Never sign off on things you didn't do... just do it all... what's that you say? You didn't have time to do it all?... lalalalalalaican'thearyouuuuu" spiel.

[yousoldtheworld]

Haha, our old DON would actually say "DON'T TELL ME THAT!!" and walk away if we told her we didn't have time to do the RoMs and etc.

[SnowbirdinFL]

One of our ADL books had holes in it throughout a particular month. A new month was about to start along with new ADL sheets and the old ones would be turned in to medical records. The charge nurse on duty knew about said holes and went up to her CNAs (me included) and said "fill in the holes". She did not care who filled them in or anything. We all flat-out refused to "fill in the holes". God I hated that nurse and I'm glad I don't work with her anymore!

[hkendrick1987]

I had a similar situation happen to me. I had a nurse (who happened to be one of my best friends at the time) tell me that I needed to just pretend as if a fall didn't happen because she didn't want to have to do the extra paperwork on the incident....

PALEEZ! I'm in no hurry to lose my job, or end up in prison, because this resident died the next day from internal injuries that weren't apparent at the time of the incident and all of the sudden "nobody knew where they came from" (hypothetically, of course...). UGH! Needless to say, that nurse is no longer employeed with the facility. I suppose she tried to proposition the wrong person and got busted. :)

[pca_85]

Oh God, all the time!