Nursing Home Adm & RN Charged by DA

MayoRN · Oct 28, 2003

well, i think the administrator and don should be charged if they decided to try and cover up the situation. but, really we should also look at the nurses etc who were on duty that night and mostly responsible for the residents well being. what they heck were they doing?

LPN-n-2005 · Oct 28, 2003

This is in response to robynrn2b- Does it count that the nurses were sitting at the station looking at magazines (Glamour,Cosmopolitian?)

michelle95 · Oct 28, 2003

The facility I work in has been having a problem lately. We do NOT have an Alzheimer unit, the whole bldg is totally open to all residents. The doors to the outside do stay locked, though.

We recently had a resident that kicked a window out and got outside. It took the whole facility to find him in a field behind the bldg about an hour and a half later. The windows are now locked.

I think that facilities need to be careful when they admit a resident. Instead of looking at the money, they need to look and see if they can properly care for this resident.

With the above one, he needed to be in a lock up unit. It took another resident almost killing him before administration would listen to us. We (the staff) had been telling admin that we could not care for this man and care for the others at the same time. He was SEVERLY demented, to the point of threatening staff and the other residents constantly. We had to keep giving him haldol because no kind of redirection would work.

I wonder about this situation...did the admin listen to the staff? But, what were thinking when they tried to cover up?

CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN · Oct 28, 2003

Michelle95, we just got a resident like yours. He definatly needed more psych care than we could handle. He cursed, hit , spit, kicked staff, threw stuff at at staff and residents, climbed out of beds and wheel chairs (was very unstable) wandered into other res rooms and threated them. All we were ordered to give him was .5 mg ativan IM (ya right) q 6 and 1 mg ativan IM q 12 prn severe agitation. Oh and the poor man had post war flash backs (was a career military man) When family was in during day he was okay...but look out sundown (love that daylight savings time!) Administration thought we just needed to deal with him and wasn't really working on a 302 that seriously (our census was low over the weekend:(

Well..I'm sorry, but I refused to put my self, staff and other residents at risk! So doc and I sent him out for a "medical" work up and eventualy 302 him!

oops I just hijacked the thread.

getting back to the issue... What about the aids who propped the door open and helped bring the poor dead lady back in side? They are adults and should be resposible for their actions too. As far as the "just following orders". Bull... its not like they are in the military and were forced to follow their comander. I'd like to see more of this explored and explained. It just puzzles me... I have a hard enough time getting my aids to to vitals and showers let alone aiding in a criminal act:confused:

ktwlpn, LPN · Oct 28, 2003

Originally posted by LPN-n-2005
This is in response to robynrn2b- Does it count that the nurses were sitting at the station looking at magazines (Glamour,Cosmopolitian?)

I would hate to see this thread morph into another nurses vs.aides thing and end up being locked (like similar threads always do) Until you have worn both of those hats YOU HAVE NO IDEA......Back to topic-we have several articles about this particular incident posted where I work-we are missing alot of the details here..I'll try to find some of the info and link it to this thread(I won't try to remember and speculate-I don't want to risk flaming the thread)

ktwlpn, LPN · Oct 28, 2003

So far I've found 30+ articles regarding the Atrium...what a snake pit..If you are interested just go to the original link and do atsearch of that newspapers archives...It's a deplorable place...

redshiloh · Oct 28, 2003

I really liked LTC, but the situation that Atrium had was not unique. I will be interested in seeing what happens when baby-boomers get older. Many more patients-will they have better facilities and more staff? How strong is the AARP lobby?

MayoRN · Oct 29, 2003

yikes guys.....this isn't a situation of cna's vs nsg staff, nor of nsg vs the administrator. really on any new admit to a ltc facility the don, admissions director, social services and rnac set the tone. of course the facility needs to be paid for services rendered (you want a paycheck too, don't you?). but, trust me...the 1st issue is safety. you can have all the policies & procedures in print...but it takes everyone on staff to be aware. there should have been door alarms for the residents who try to flee...plus the nsg staff should have been aware and watching. really its the DON responsibility...she's needed to listen to her staff's concerns and then respond. she decided to coverup.

Katnip, RN · Oct 29, 2003

I would really like to know what is it that makes such glaring differences between Rusty's LTC and Plato's. Admin, money, what?

Offhand, I don't know the governing agency that inspects nursing homes, but Plato, you're a caring person, it might be time to start writing to that agency.

I know, once upon a time, families had the ability to have someone at home all day to take care of the kids, then later the elders. That isn't possible these days for most people, so we need to turn to facilities for help. This doesn't need to be a bad thing, but it's going to be up to us to create an outcry loud enough to make sure elders get the best sort of care, without taking it out on the direct providers. We need to start slamming them at the corporate and legal level.

Our parents, grandparents, beloved aunties, and uncles, deserve nothing less.

ANnot4me · Oct 29, 2003

I am sure I will be flamed for this, but I can't help myself. Nurses are patient advocate. Any nurse that works in a situation like the one described above is taking a gamble and deserves what s/he gets. The govt agencies know what's going on in these places, so reporting them is often futile.

I worked in a nursing home for 2 weeks. During that 2 weeks, I was told repeatedly to lie, more than a couple of aides walked out in the middle of their shift, and it took me about an hour to find a working BP cuff so that I could take the BP of a woman who was complaining of dizziness. Of course, she was very hypotensive and on a slew of BP meds. To be honest, the place wasn't all that bad. Guess how many of the nurses that worked their were born and trained in the US? None. I am not saying that they were incompetent, I'm just saying that if they left that job, they were on the first boat out. I guess that to them lying and falsifying legal documents was better than the alternative. In the long run, the karma bill must equal a pretty hefty sum!

CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN · Oct 30, 2003

The Department of health inspects all nursing homes in the state of PA. You can report online or even call without telling them who you are. There is also the ombudsman to refer to. As far as being an advocate for our pts.. if I would have left my facility the first time we ran out of supplies or were short staffed I would have just helped further the decline of the facility. I have been with the same place for about 8 yrs now and would like to have thought I made a difference in a few lives. What it boils down to is the leadership in these LTCs without it you just have a bunch of incompetent nurses who only want a paycheck..