I Hope This is Not the Latest Trend

Nurses General Nursing

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I hope this is not the latest trend to be putting nurses in jail.

(CNN)Current and former employees of an Ohio nursing facility are accused of mistreating two patients in their care, including one who died as a result of the nurses' actions, Attorney General Dave Yost said Thursday.

A Franklin County grand jury indicted seven people who worked as nurses in 2017 at Whetstone Gardens and Care Center in Columbus, Yost said in a news conference.

The defendants face 34 charges, including involuntary manslaughter and patient neglect, Yost's office said.

One patient "literally rotted to death" as a direct result of the nurses' neglect, Yost said, adding that another suffered physical harm because nurses falsified her medical records and forged signatures.

"This is gut-wrenching for anyone who has entrusted a care facility with the well-being and safety of a loved one," Yost said.

The accused include six current and former employees.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/ohio-nursing-home-patient-neglect-accusations-bn/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fapple.news%2FAoPN6WYqqT6Otez_aEF9qCA

It's a broken system. While some of the fault falls on the nurses, I know people who work in LTC and at nursing facilities who say admin at those places are content with allowing a nurse to oversee as much as 20 patients (!). There is simply no way you can effectively and safely care for that many patients, no matter how stable they are. There needs to be federal laws passed re: nurse/patient ratios, both in the acute hospital setting and in long term facilities.

5 Votes
12 hours ago, juan de la cruz said:

Oh I agree, but with all due respect to the OP, these kinds of stories are not new nor are they a new trend. These have been happening in nursing facilities for years and so cases of elder abuse and neglect have been prosecuted criminally in court for a long time. I am not associating these stories with the other thread on med errors ?.

https://www.ncoa.org/public-policy-action/elder-justice/elder-abuse-facts/

I’ll do my best not to derail this thread but frankly, I do think they are related. With people flocking to nursing and schools driven by profit unless we start making people responsible for their behavior (individual AND institutional) we are going to see more and more stories like this and others.

2 Votes
On 2/16/2019 at 11:50 AM, Tenebrae said:

They are responsible for doing something when they see a wound deteriorating.

At the very minimum, chart what you see and tell their doctor. Literally anything but ignore it

2 Votes
6 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

I’ll do my best not to derail this thread but frankly, I do think they are related. With people flocking to nursing and schools driven by profit unless we start making people responsible for their behavior (individual AND institutional) we are going to see more and more stories like this and others.

Being driven by profit has nothing to do with it. Every one us, no matter what our job is, we're driven by profit. We work because we have to live and pay bills. You pick a career because it's a reality that you have to spend your life working... So you pick something that you have an interest in.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the common sense to at least ask someone else to take care of work for them if they're too backed up to get to it. Some of the least compassionate people can be the best care providers, while some of the most compassionate people can be so dumb that they're a danger to the patient.

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4 minutes ago, tonyl1234 said:

Being driven by profit has nothing to do with it. Every one us, no matter what our job is, we're driven by profit. We work because we have to live and pay bills. You pick a career because it's a reality that you have to spend your life working... So you pick something that you have an interest in.

When it comes to for-profit schools yes it has everything to do with it. They’ll take anyone with a pulse. Provide a crappy clinical education. Teach only to pass the NCLEX and then foist these ill-prepared graduates on the public.

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2 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

When it comes to for-profit schools yes it has everything to do with it. They’ll take anyone with a pulse. Provide a crappy clinical education. Teach only to pass the NCLEX and then foist these ill-prepared graduates on the public.

I know amazing nurses from for profit schools, and I know complete morons from state schools. The school being for-profit has nothing to do with it. There's tons of very reputable for-profit nursing schools. Some of our best in the country are for-profit

1 Votes
6 minutes ago, tonyl1234 said:

Some of our best in the country are for-profit

Cite your source.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I do not, and will never understand why this board bends over backwards to defend nurses that demonstrate wonton negligence, bad professional judgement leading to patient harm, and outright unethical and illegal acts like falsifying charts.

6 Votes

I have been in jobs where there was strong pressure and temptation to falsify charts. This is so far from a rare situation.

My question is how did the NP get pulled in and who was she working for?

2 Votes
1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

When it comes to for-profit schools yes it has everything to do with it. They’ll take anyone with a pulse. Provide a crappy clinical education. Teach only to pass the NCLEX and then foist these ill-prepared graduates on the public.

I agree. I feel I was one of those ill-prepared graduates though I graduated at the top of my class. I think maybe we should go back to teaching / learning to be a nurse on the job in a facility, well in a dream-world anyway, where facilities are not run with profit in mind.

1 Votes
Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
10 minutes ago, Oldmahubbard said:

My question is ... who was she working for?

It's in her Doximity profile if you want to find out.

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In any case, looks like she was documenting examinations she wasn't actually doing.

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