I Hope This is Not the Latest Trend

[PhyllisMSN]

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

[blondenurse12, MSN, NP]

I'm not defending these nurses but I think we need to look at the bigger picture. Prosecuting them maybe will make the family feel better but what will it accomplish? The real problem is that these places don't have enough manpower. We need legal nurse to patient ratios.

Before she died, my grandmother was in a facility that she paid a pretty penny for and even then, they only had one nurse for the ENTIRE facility. How can a nurse do his/her job when she has 30 patients? Some who have a bajillion meds? It all cycles back to people want to be enraged about things but not actually do anything to fix it.

[Persephone Paige, ADN]

My opinion probably won't be popular, but as long as these places exist ( LTCs ), nurses such as these will be there. Does anybody in here really think these facilities provide good care? If so, what makes you think so? Really, just curious. The nurses on night shift routinely have 40 patients, day shift nurses have 30. If my numbers are off, I apologize. I'm trying to remember what I was told. How in the hell is it humanely possible to care for 40 people? And why in the hell do these places exist in integrity? Even if you were so inclined to be a good, conscientious nurse, how would you accomplish it?

I have told my kids that I'm going to crawl off into the woods and die, like a cat. It's a more preferable end. Or they have my permission to euthanize me.

It's disgusting what happened to these poor people. But it's equally as disgusting that anyone can get on here and take any moral high ground when a vulnerable individual in thrown in a concentration facility and somehow expected to flourish.

Aides sleep or smoke their shifts away. Nurses go on 3 1/2 hour med passes... wound? What wound? Who the hell has time to look at a wound? By the time you finish with one med pass, it's time to start another. And, that's provided it doesn't take each resident more than a few minutes to choke down their pills.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know of any viable solution. It just helps if people don't get on here and pretend they actually think people are well taken care of at LTCs. The smell of urine, feces and death will knock you down when you walk through the door. And that's the very first introduction every single one of us had to LTCs in nursing school. I was so depressed in Fundamentals, I almost changed my major.

These places should not exist.

[Sour Lemon]

1 hour ago, Persephone Paige said:

My opinion probably won't be popular, but as long as these places exist ( LTCs ), nurses such as these will be there. Does anybody in here really think these facilities provide good care? If so, what makes you think so? Really, just curious. The nurses on night shift routinely have 40 patients, day shift nurses have 30. If my numbers are off, I apologize. I'm trying to remember what I was told. How in the hell is it humanely possible to care for 40 people? And why in the hell do these places exist in integrity? Even if you were so inclined to be a good, conscientious nurse, how would you accomplish it?

I have told my kids that I'm going to crawl off into the woods and die, like a cat. It's a more preferable end. Or they have my permission to euthanize me.

It's disgusting what happened to these poor people. But it's equally as disgusting that anyone can get on here and take any moral high ground when a vulnerable individual in thrown in a concentration facility and somehow expected to flourish.

Aides sleep or smoke their shifts away. Nurses go on 3 1/2 hour med passes... wound? What wound? Who the hell has time to look at a wound? By the time you finish with one med pass, it's time to start another. And, that's provided it doesn't take each resident more than a few minutes to choke down their pills.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know of any viable solution. It just helps if people don't get on here and pretend they actually think people are well taken care of at LTCs. The smell of urine, feces and death will knock you down when you walk through the door. And that's the very first introduction every single one of us had to LTCs in nursing school. I was so depressed in Fundamentals, I almost changed my major.

These places should not exist.

I'd take it a step further and say that many of the patients in these facilities shouldn't exist, either. Seeing these patients come to acute care to be "saved" over and over again is the absolute most depressing part of my job. Very few have any decent quality of life. Most would be better off if they were able and allowed to wander off into the woods.

[Emergent, RN]

7 minutes ago, Sour Lemon said:

I'd take it a step further and say that many of the patients in these facilities shouldn't exist, either. Seeing these patients come to acute care to be "saved" over and over again is the absolute most depressing part of my job. Very few have any decent quality of life. Most would be better off if they were able and allowed to wander off into the woods.

I agree that medicine has gone too far.

[Persephone Paige, ADN]

40 minutes ago, Sour Lemon said:

I'd take it a step further and say that many of the patients in these facilities shouldn't exist, either. Seeing these patients come to acute care to be "saved" over and over again is the absolute most depressing part of my job. Very few have any decent quality of life. Most would be better off if they were able and allowed to wander off into the woods.

So true. I was just telling my husband something similar tonight. One of his friends who is 80 is bemoaning his short time due to illness. What the absolute ****? 80? That's a long life. Eighty isn't the short straw... Oh well.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

10 hours ago, tonyl1234 said:

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

Absolutely.

There is no excuse what so ever for a patients wound to get so bad its described as 'rotting from the inside out'

We are lucky, our doctors are more than happy to let nurses take the lead on wound care, including dressing regimes and whether a referal to specialist wound care services are needed.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

10 hours 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.

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.

One thing I have noticed in the US, with no central authority to guide nursing education and how its provided through nursing schools you get some graduates who need five or more attempts to pass NCLEX and those who pass on the first go. It seems very hit and miss

All our nursing schools have to teach specific curriculum's to be accredited as a nursing school. Our national pass rates are around 95-100% most years. Occasionally a nursing student may need to resit their state final exam (NCLEX) once if they dont pass the first time, and after that need serious remediation before being allowed to sit the exam again. No student would ever be allowed to sit the exam multiple times until they pass.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

50 minutes ago, Emergent said:

I agree that medicine has gone too far.

Medicine doesnt cope well with letting people die.

I recall having a strongly worded discussion with a doctor about a patient in end stage COPD with a chest infection not responding to antibiotics. Dr was bamboozled as to why the patient didnt want to go to hospital for IVABs.

Patient was a former nurse who knew exactly how their disease would progress and we'd had a discussion the last time they had gone to hospital and they had said to me, "tenebrae, i know that if I dont go to hospital I may well die, and I'm ok with that"

Patient was alert and orientated

[Emergent, RN]

I mentioned in another thread how President Franklin Roosevelt collapsed of a cerebral hemorrhage. A doctor was summoned, and in 2 hours he slipped away, at home, surrounded by loved ones.

This was the President of the United States, who died of natural causes, at his get away home. He wasn't intubated and helivaced off to a distant hospital.

There is often more dignity in the older ways of living and dying. Better than being in a vegetative state in the name of 'life' extension at all costs.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

8 minutes ago, Emergent said:

I mentioned in another thread how President Franklin Roosevelt collapsed of a cerebral hemorrhage. A doctor was summoned, and in 2 hours he slipped away, at home, surrounded by loved ones.

This was the President of the United States, who died of natural causes, at his get away home. He wasn't intubated and helivaced off to a distant hospital.

There is often more dignity in the older ways of living and dying. Better than being in a vegetative state in the name of 'life' extension at all costs.

My nana woke up feeling unwell one morning and by 1000 she was gone. Didnt even go to hospital

Hope I go like that when my time comes

[PhyllisMSN, MSN, RN]

On 2/15/2019 at 7:00 AM, CharleeFoxtrot said:

This case is very well documented in the press. The issue was not about who wrote the wound care orders, it's about nurses charting they did treatments when in fact they did not-and that is only a fractional part of the overall failure of this facility and its staff to provide care to this patient.

So wouldn't you agree that there should be more charges brought besides the nurses?

[PhyllisMSN, MSN, RN]

On 2/16/2019 at 10:27 AM, Jory said:

Yes, I hope it's a trend because these people SHOULD BE in jail.

Falsifying information and forging signatures is a choice. If that in turn causes a patient's death, then yes, you should be charged with contributing to that person's death.

Abuse of a patient, is a choice.

Severe neglect, is a choice.

I have no problem with these people sitting in jail.

Don't protect other nurses that make these choices.

Why should "just" the nurses go to jail? If the patient's wounds were so necrotic that the patient went into septic shock, this did not happen overnight. Doctors are paid a nice salary to oversee these patients most likely by CMS. The providers did not look at the necrotic wound? The providers did not ask for debridements? The patient's labs did not show an infection? The wounds were not ordered to be cultured? Is no one monitoring the patient's vital signs?

I am not protecting other nurses when they are clearly wrong. There were 100,000 deaths due to medical mistakes last year according to CMS. No doctors are being hauled off to jail and no one is calling for doctors to be hauled off to jail. Usually, when these sentinel events occur, it is a systems process error. I can't go along with just the "nurses" are responsible.