Hospitals fail to protect nursing staff from becoming patients

[catmom1]

The below is a link to the first in a series of stories by NPR on the dangers of nursing. We all know these things to be true and it is high time the powers that be are held accountable for caring only about the bottom line and not about the health of employees.

Hospitals Fail To Protect Nursing Staff From Becoming Patients : NPR

What do y'all think?

Catmom :paw:

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Hospital To Nurses: Your Injuries Are Not Our Problem

February 18, 2015

The case of Terry Cawthorn and Mission Hospital, in Asheville, N.C., gives a glimpse of how some hospital officials around the country have shrugged off an epidemic.

Cawthorn was a nurse at Mission for more than 20 years. Her supervisor testified under oath that she was "one of my most reliable employees."

Then, as with other nurses described this month in the NPR investigative series Injured Nurses, a back injury derailed Cawthorn's career. Nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and other body injuries than almost any other occupation, and most of those injuries are caused by lifting and moving patients.

But in Cawthorn's case, administrators at Mission Hospital refused to acknowledge her injuries were caused on the job. In fact, court records, internal hospital documents and interviews with former hospital medical staff suggest that hospital officials often refused to acknowledge that the everyday work of nursing employees frequently injures them. And Mission is not unique...

... It was in the afternoon on her 45th birthday. A large patient had just had a cesarean section, and Cawthorn was helping move her from the gurney onto her bed — a task that nursing employees perform thousands of times every day.

"She kind of had one cheek on the bed, one cheek on the stretcher, and we [were] trying to help her," Cawthorn says.

To demonstrate, Cawthorn bends her knees and crouches, keeping her back straight. She extends her arms like railings, as though she's holding them out for the patient to grip.

"And the second she grabbed on, almost instantaneously I felt like hot tar was just going down my spine, into my butt," Cawthorn says.

By the time she left work that day, she could hardly walk — or drive. Her husband had to lift her out of her car and carry her into their home, and lay her on the floor...

... Cawthorn took painkillers and made it back to work the next morning, and reported the injury to her supervisor. Then she hurt her back again barely a week later when she lifted another patient. She injured her back a third time a few days after that. And nine months later, Cawthorn herself became the patient in the hospital where she worked: She had a "lumbar interbody fusion," an operation in which the surgeon built a metal cage around her spine...

... officials at Mission refused to help Cawthorn. According to court documents, the hospital's own medical staff concluded that she was hurt moving patients. But the hospital's lawyer disagreed, arguing that Cawthorn actually hurt her back partly while lifting a dinner casserole out of her oven.

Mission hospital officials also said that as a result of Cawthorn's back injury she was no longer fit to work.

Cawthorn and her husband say she was lying in her hospital bed two days after back surgery, when a hospital representative walked into her room and handed her a document.

It announced that Mission was terminating her job...

... Klaaren says it also was "commonplace" for hospital officials to ignore what their occupational medical staff said.

In fact, Klaaren and other medical specialists from Mission's staff clinic — who talked only on condition that we withhold their names, for fear of retaliation — told NPR that whenever they examined injured employees, they were required to fill out a form with the employee's name, date of injury, and diagnosis, followed by a section with two boxes: "In our opinion, injury or illness is" or "is not work related."...

... Hospital officials ordered the occupational health staff not to check either box, Klaaren and other sources told NPR. Instead, hospital administrators filled them out — even if they had not seen the injured employee.

The doctor who ran the staff health clinic, J. Paul Martin, warned Mission's executives for years that the hospital was mistreating injured employees, according to dozens of internal hospital emails and other documents obtained by NPR. The doctor's emails went to Mission's vice president and general counsel, the chief of staff, a member of the board of directors, and others.

... the court ruled in 2002, in the case of an injured employee named Jennifer Rosenfelt, that Mission's refusal to cover some of her medical care was "based upon stubborn, unfounded litigiousness." The court ruled in 2004, in the case of another injured employee named Jeanne Chellis, that hospital officials "acted in bad faith" by not sharing evidence.

In Cawthorn's case, the workers' compensation court declared in 2011 that the way key officials at Mission Hospital treated her "constitute[d] fraud" — because they refused to pay her workers' compensation benefits "when they knew she was entitled to the same." In 2012, judges on the workers' compensation court got so upset with Mission in the case of an injured employee named Cathy Goff — they said the hospital had given the court information that was "not credible" and even "false" — that they said Mission should be investigated for fraud...

... "The view is, for every dollar I prevent going to a worker, that's more dollars for the company," Berger says. "Every [penny] I spend on a worker is less money I can spend elsewhere in the hospital."

Mission Health's own reports show that the corporation has been spending millions of dollars to expand its business. During the past decade,

Mission has taken over or merged with five other hospitals.

It has taken over doctors' practices, and other medical firms.

A Mission spokesman told a national meeting a few years ago, "We're kind of the 500-pound gorilla" in the region...

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/18/385786650/injured-nurses-case-is-a-symptom-of-industry-problems

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Model Program to Provide Ins. Benefit for 12,000 California, Nevada RNs

May 03, 2014

A landmark program to provide supplemental insurance protection for registered nurses injured in workplace assaults or injuries went live this week for 12,000 RNs who work in 28 California and Nevada hospitals that are a part of one of the nation's largest hospital systems, Dignity Health.

Under the RN Accident Prevention Program, Dignity hospitals commit to joining with the nurses, represented by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United and National Nurses Organizing Committee-Nevada/NNU to work to eliminate workplace violence, accidents and injuries, such as needle stick injuries - and to back it up financially with a landmark supplemental insurance plan.

The policy provides RNs with benefits of up to $200,000 in the event of accidental death, felonious assault, contraction of HIV or hepatitis from needle sticks, as well as other indemnity benefits and trauma counseling.

The program covers Dignity hospitals in Northern California, Southern California, the Sacramento region, San Bernardino, the Central California Coast, and Las Vegas...

Bad Request

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

At VA Hospitals, Training And Technology Reduce Nurses' Injuries

... Umoffia didn't try to lift Valencia using her own muscle. Instead, Umoffia attached the hook dangling from the ceiling to a fabric sling wrapped around Valencia's body. She pushed the button on a control box, and a gentle whir filled the room. The machine slowly hoisted Valencia in his sling a few feet over the bed, swung him until he was dangling in midair over a waterproof wheelchair, and then gently lowered him. "I'm comfortable," Valencia said, adding that he felt "like a little baby" hanging from a stork's beak...

At VA Hospitals, Training And Technology Reduce Nurses' Injuries : NPR

[medicalforonevoice]

Here is a scenario, what do think? I monitored the Nursing Board in my State for about 4 years (recently). Understand, there is a true need for the Board, but some cases should be dealt with at the "business" level. Many times there were cases where a staff member, in this instance Nurses, did not let the person down properly while the patient was caught in a mid-air fall. The "business", states that the Nurse should have grabbed the policy and performed the function as the policy stated. Now, patient falling, Nurse there...attempting to catch in mid-air fall. My thought; "are you people crazy?" Seriously, let the patient fall, say..."one moment while I read the policy." Our minds and bodies react to what? Split second decisions, catching a patient, then lowering them down. Oh, and don't forget, as they are falling, grab your gate-belt, place around the patients waste, to ease them to the floor or best scenario, a chair. These really do happen at BON hearings! The "businesses" well being, keep the cost of injuries down. I truly get that, as I helped to write policies and worked on decreasing injuries, designed Fall Risk Assessment, etc. Now, my thought is can it be handled at the "business" level? Now, negligence another animal. But, these "businesses" that throw a Nurse to the wolves to protect their assets need a realization of what happens at that point. Nurses need to be proactive, being part of the solution and not the problem. Hard I know, but until we let our voices be heard, this will keep happening. Boards make a decision based on the information given, it could lead to a domino effect motion. Aweright, we all know there are policies in place. We make split second decisions. Not perfect, but for myself, I would and have reached out catching the person to prevent any possible injury and did strain my back. I never thought in that split second to 1) grab the policy and read it, 2) To grab a gate-belt. 3 seconds from the start of the tumbling motion, to the landing. Maybe a possible solution is to ask the powers that be, who get the complaints, to change the "Standards" of how they deal with those complaints. Working on that in my State. What's your thoughts?

[toomuchbaloney]

Nurses need to be proactive, being part of the solution and not the problem. Hard I know, but until we let our voices be heard, this will keep happening. Boards make a decision based on the information given, it could lead to a domino effect motion.

I have been nursing for almost 40 years. Nurses have always worked to improve safety for patients and for themselves. I wonder about this part...

"until we let our voices be heard, this will keep happening"

To me this implies that nursing is NOT speaking out and it is our fault that our voices are not heard. I beg to differ. Nurses do speak out and have been for some time. For a spell when nurses spoke out some would lose their jobs...then we passed some laws about whistleblowers.

We don't "let" our voices be heard...we speak out so that those who WOULD hear COULD hear. It is the choice of the listener to decide what they will hear or not hear.

Clearly there are a number of very important issues for which nursing has good commentary and potential solutions, but big money health care systems are just not that interested and as a result, don't listen very closely.