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.
This reminds me of the Ohio nursing home where a meth lab was discovered in a resident's room after a fatal fire. My first reaction was to wonder how bad staffing must have been for no one to notice.
I think we are only beginning to uncover how horrible things are in most LTC facilities. And the people involved are seldom monsters. They have been socialized, gradually, to think this is all normal, and they may have very few other job options.
Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
16 minutes ago, Not_A_Hat_Person said:
This reminds me of the Ohio nursing home where a meth lab was discovered in a resident's room after a fatal fire. My first reaction was to wonder how bad staffing must have been for no one to notice.
OK, you got me thinking of grandpa cooking up meth until I had to look up the story, lol. It sounds like three men were involved and they were likely visitors to the nursing home. See that's the ultimate disrespect to the elderly to think that one could walk into a place like that and endanger a large number of elderly residents. Wow, nurses have to look out for visitors too?
Eating my Chinese food for lunch, that typo cracked me up.
Add forging nurses' signatures to the illegal acts (which I guess would fall under 'falsifying charts,' but since it drags an additional person into the deception, seems even worse).
I was eating wontons while I wrote that, so yeah....
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?
THANK YOU for your honest post, and I repeat your questions to every nurse who thinks they could've done better: "How in the hell is it humanely possible to care for 40 people? Even if you were so inclined to be a good, conscientious nurse, how would you accomplish it?"
If your answer is to quit the job, I agree with you -- but what do we advise people who say they NEED THE JOB?
On 2/17/2019 at 10:06 PM, Persephone Paige said:
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.
Calling all nurses who could've done better: answer the question in bold keeping in mind you have 30-40 patients.
On 2/17/2019 at 9:03 PM, blondenurse12 said:
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.
Oh, blondnurse12, don't forget that people are enraged but they are indeed doing something to fix it: just arrest all the nurses who wanted to do what was required to keep their job because they needed a job but who couldn't possibly meet the impossible demands of the job...won't that fix it, just put the nurses in jail? ?
Attention fellow nurses who are fed up with all those bad, bad nurses doing the best they can at jobs that set them up to fail: If one day it finally occurs to you that we can put as many nurses in jail as you want and that doesn't fix the tragic problems that will keep occurring at understaffed facilities -- then consider channeling your anger, passion, time, and energy to improving the work conditions that cause subpar nursing care.
I worked in a nursing home for two weeks. I ran away. I felt i was forced to do things that could have my license revoked. I was only able to run away because I have a good support system and i live in an area with a decent job market. I was able to find another job in a few months, and i was able to live comfortably while i was unemployed. Not everyone can say the same. Its not always so easy to walk away when you have bills to pay, no support and no other job on the horizon.
I think many of us here know what goes on in some nursing homes. And i think we know its not just about the nurses.
The nursing home that I left is still standing, and as far as i know, the nurses there still have their.licences. They will probably always have a license unless there is a serious incident leading to an investigation. It is expected that they will falsify records and skip treatments with 30 to 40 patients to one nurse. It has been normalized. I do believe we have to stand up for these nurses. Everybody knows whats happening, ignores it, then throws these women under the bus when someone outside of the system takes notice.
Nurses deal with understaffing/lack of resources in hospitals, schools, and just about every.place we practice. Its dangerous to nursing practice. The nurses mentioned in this article are probably finished professionally. But let's not pretend that its only about them and their poor personal choices.
Thank you to hyllisR- your passion for your fellow nurses is appreciated. I wish i had an answer to solve the systemic problems.
THANK YOU for your honest post showing compassion for fellow nurses who work in horrible conditions!!!
If you are a nurse who has been blessed enough to never have had to work in such conditions, or never have experienced the desperation of needing a job to survive, find it in yourself to imagine what that would be like, find your compassion for these people, and ask yourself if the world is better that they are criminalized. Please.
As long as medicine keeps extending lives ( keeping hearts pumping while brains and bodies wear out ), people keep wanting to live forever, kids want some place to stuff mom, dad or whomever and people need jobs, this is going to keep happening. And someone will get an award somewhere...
Meanwhile, Nurse Nancy gets sent to the big house for killing 94 year old Pops and her kid gets sent to foster care.
Specializes in Mental Health, Gerontology, Palliative.
3 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:
THANK YOU for your honest post showing compassion for fellow nurses who work in horrible conditions!!!
If you are a nurse who has been blessed enough to never have had to work in such conditions, or never have experienced the desperation of needing a job to survive, find it in yourself to imagine what that would be like, find your compassion for these people, and ask yourself if the world is better that they are criminalized. Please.
I have worked in similar situations to these nurses and I continue to call bull bollocks that poor resources and poor staffing is in any way an excuse for the criminally negligent behaviour of those nurses
I've had shifts where I've been the only nurse for 90 plus residents, including respite (temporary) residents who go into end stage of living needing extensive palliative care input and playing fax the provider who lives in another city and cant come to the facility because they had a full patient list in surgery. And you know what, I got it done. Not because I'm super nurse, or remotely remarkable in any way, but because it needed to be done.
Lack of resources, crap staffing is not EVER an excuse for nursing negligence such as outlines in the original post.
THANK YOU for your honest post showing compassion for fellow nurses who work in horrible conditions!!!
If you are a nurse who has been blessed enough to never have had to work in such conditions, or never have experienced the desperation of needing a job to survive, find it in yourself to imagine what that would be like, find your compassion for these people, and ask yourself if the world is better that they are criminalized. Please.
Before coming to nursing school, I was in a field that had risks of losing my license, it had risks of prison if I got in an accident that caused ANY injury if I had to act illegally for my job. Know what I did? I didn't act illegally. A new job in my old field and definitely in nursing can be as easy as a phone call away. If you're willing to travel, there's always a high paying job for pretty much anyone in this country. Maybe you'll have to travel for a few months, it's not the end of the world. Travel jobs WILL hire you, because most people do not want to travel. It's horrible. But it's a job.
You have the law on your side. You can only be in one place at a time. Can't check over a patient to look for wounds? It happens. Don't say that you did. But don't make it a habit of not being able to at least do a quick half-assed check of a patient to check for anything majorly wrong, especially if you're in a hospital where checking their skin takes maybe 20 seconds to glance over it and see if anything stands out thanks to them being in gowns. Or in a nursing home, maybe a minute. 30 minutes of your day spread across 8 to 12 hours, I'm sure you can find time. You've been looking at skin analytically for years, after spending your entire life having skin. It's not hard to notice a gaping hole and think "that's not right."
And if you're in a situation where you're dangerously understaffed, demand that they make calls to get coverage. If your state only allows 15 patients to one nurse in a LTC, you usually have a legal right to refuse to accept more than 15. Know your state's staffing laws. It's illegal to force you to do something illegal (though there's occasionally exceptions for declared emergencies, but that gets a little more complex. But staffing is rarely an exception). Read your laws, know what you can do about being expected to take on more patients than what's safe, know what you can do about being expected to sign off in work you never did. The law is the most useful tool you have for protecting your job, your license, and your freedom.
That said, the nurses in the example, I have no sympathy for them. Forging the signatures, that's painfully obviously wrong. And you're allowed to refuse to, even if it means that a patient dies because of not getting a vital medication, you're covered because there was no signed order. Never forge a signature, because if there's ANY mistake, "that's not what the doctor said." Lying on the records, again, just don't do it. If you didn't do it, don't say you did. Here's what the law sees: They assessed everything, found something wrong, but chose to pretend they didn't. If you couldn't do it, note that you couldn't and why. If you don't have time to assess a patient, tell your charge nurse, or your director, or an administrator, all the way up to the doctor. Get SOMEONE to do it, and note that you did. If you find a wound and either don't have time to address it or have no clue what you're doing, do the same exact thing. If you're really in bind, if you're working in a hospital, call the wound team. If you're working in a LTC, call for transport to an ER. Literally as long as you do more than nothing, you're covered.
If you get fired, you get fired. You're in demand, you'll find a new job fast. You'll have unemployment. Most states are awesome about any PTO that it's considered unpaid pay, so you should get a check for everything you had saved. You'll be fine for a couple weeks. And then you'll be back to normal. It's way better than prison.
THANK YOU for your honest post showing compassion for fellow nurses who work in horrible conditions!!!
If you are a nurse who has been blessed enough to never have had to work in such conditions, or never have experienced the desperation of needing a job to survive, find it in yourself to imagine what that would be like, find your compassion for these people, and ask yourself if the world is better that they are criminalized. Please.
I'm beginning to think you need to find a new job.
I've had shifts where I've been the only nurse for 90 plus residents, including respite (temporary) residents who go into end stage of living needing extensive palliative care input and playing fax the provider who lives in another city and cant come to the facility because they had a full patient list in surgery. And you know what, I got it done. Not because I'm super nurse, or remotely remarkable in any way, but because it needed to be done.
Wow. I know you don't think you are a super nurse, but if you can pass all meds, check for wounds, and do all other care and charting for that many patients then in my book you are not just super-nurse, you are super human! If I could watch a video of how someone gets it all done in such circumstances, I'm sure I would learn a lot. I don't know how it's physically or mentally possible. So how many patients or how much work would be too much for you to be able to get it done? And if you were given too much, I highly commend that you would not take shortcuts -- I'm guessing the advice would be tell bosses it's impossible if it is and be willing to quit or be fired if demanded to do an unsafe work load. That's good advice. Any advice for those who say leaving a needed job is easier said than done?
10 hours ago, Tenebrae said:
Lack of resources, crap staffing is not EVER an excuse for nursing negligence such as outlines in the original post.
Here's where we might hit our dead-end of useful back and forth, because I understand you think we should criminalize those nurses...and I don't think so. BON should handle mistakes and negligence; leave criminal laws for criminals.
THANK YOU for your honest post showing compassion for fellow nurses who work in horrible conditions!!!
If you are a nurse who has been blessed enough to never have had to work in such conditions, or never have experienced the desperation of needing a job to survive, find it in yourself to imagine what that would be like, find your compassion for these people, and ask yourself if the world is better that they are criminalized. Please.
I'm beginning to think you need to find a new job.
I agree, that is good advice to tell nurses to be willing to quit or be fired rather than continue to work with unsafe work loads or to be willing to cut corners to meet impossible work demands. That is what we most have in our power to do..."vote with our feet" as they say. But is that all the solutions we have for nurses in today's work environments?
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Not_A_Hat_Person, RN
2,900 Posts
This reminds me of the Ohio nursing home where a meth lab was discovered in a resident's room after a fatal fire. My first reaction was to wonder how bad staffing must have been for no one to notice.