Patient Abandonment

[PMFB-RN]

For the last 20+ years I've been casual at a tiny (12 bed) rural critical access hospital. I mainly work there because its a lot of fun and I'm often the only RN on duty.

The hospital has an attached small nursing home. It's usually staffed with one nurse, usually an RN but sometimes an LPN at night and 2 or 3 CNAs.

Last week my phone rang in the middle of the night and it was the DON of the hospital/nursing home calling me from out of state where she was on vacation. She asked my to come in and cover the nursing home for a few hours as the LPN on duty couldn't be found.

One of the CNAs went to talk to the nurse and couldn't find him. After a search of the bathrooms and other usual places failed to turn up the nurse the CNA called the DON, who called me and the police.

I know NOTHING about nursing home nursing. I've spent my whole career  in critical care and ER but I agreed to go in to "just be there". I arrived at about 3AM, the LPN had been missing for about an hour. 

The only deputy sheriff on duty in the (very rural) county showed up and conducted a search of the surrounding area that also failed to find the missing nurse.

About an hour before shift change (so absent about 4 hours) the missing nurse strolls in through the front door and was very surprised to see me there. I called off the cop and also let the DON know her missing LPN had returned. I questioned him and he didn't hesitate to tell me that he had left to spend some time with his girlfriend and, even more shocking, admitted that he often would visit her during his shift and didn't understand what the problem was "everything was quiet".

The DON asked me to inform him he was fired and collect his badge and keys from him. She has since been in contact with the state board of nursing and is fully confident he will lose his license. I sure hope he does. I had to write a report of the discussion I had with him when he arrived back to the NH for the board.

I'm blown away that a licensed nurse would see no issue with leaving his patients for hours when there was no other nurse in the building. 

[Stillcare23]

Agree. I found at the job I just had to absolutely RUN from for my saftey. Most of the employees become nurses for money reasons. NOT pt care. While I know the systems are changing and ultimately money is important I do Beleive Pt care and outcomes are why a human would get into nursing in the first place. I get the big world and how it works but if you simply don’t care don’t do it. Sounds the case.  I keep seeing these people who will outright say I just want money, a raise, to step abc and not care at all about nursing. 

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

What is a PFMB?

Long, long ago, I worked Nights very briefly at a Nursing Home, quitting after the incident I will share.  I had at least 30 patients of my own and was seriously busy taking care of them.

The LVN on the other wing had at least that many but apparently decided it would be OK to abandon them.  The aide from that wing came to get me, saying she couldn't find him and there was some IV alarm going off.  I went over, took care of the alarm, then started hunting for him.  It was about 0100.

We all hunted, couldn't locate him.  I called the ADON.  She told me to watch his patients.  I asked how I was supposed to do that, given that his patients were on a totally different side of the building and that meant that I couldn't take proper care of my own wing.  She said she'd come in if he didn't turn up within the hour.

She did not come in, didn't answer her phone when I tried to reach her at 0200.  I struggled through the next 5 hours, running back and forth to both wings, relying heavily on the aides - who were good but they were not licensed.  I was very uneasy, as I was not familiar with that wing.  

I promptly resigned when she did arrive.  She was aggravated with me for not giving 2 weeks' notice!  I don't care what anybody says - we do eat our young - and I was the meal that night.  I told her my license was in jeopardy in such a facility (there had been other issues but this event was the straw that broke the camel's back).  

I saw the vanishing LPN coming back in as I was leaving.  He said he had gone to put gas in his car.  I guess he went directly to the refinery 100 miles away to buy it.

[PMFB-RN, RN]

19 hours ago, Kooky Korky said:

 

What is a PMFB?

Paul ****** ******* Bunion

My nick name in the army. In my unit the ability to sneak around quietly in the woods at night was a highly prized skill. I sucked at it.

     "Damn! You sound like Paul ****** ******* Bunuon coming though there!"

   The nickname stuck. It's the name all my best friends know me by.

[vince_reads, BSN, LVN, RN]

I am horrified by this nurse. How could you? The Board of Nursing needs to revoke his license. Good luck with that Mr. LPN. 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

On 11/10/2021 at 1:38 PM, PMFB-RN said:

Honestly, severe dyslexia.  Writting for my BSN program was absolute murder. I had to hire someone to edit my papers. While the content of the program was unchallenging, boring and in my opinion useless, writting papers for me is murder.

Unless you had somebody else write these posts, I'd say it might be time for a second opinion on that. I edit dyslexics and garden-variety poor writers, and you, my friend, don't show me that. Great story, good outcome. I hope she got her arm reattached.

[Rionoir, ADN, RN]

On 11/9/2021 at 5:53 AM, Jedrnurse said:

BUT, BUT, "everything was quiet"...?

Seriously though, it does boggle the mind.

 

BTW, if I were you, I'd nip that getting called in the middle of the night thing to cover the SNF in the bud. Once you've marked yourself as a one-person staffing pool, it'll be tempting for them to keep bugging you.

Yea, next time the entire unit is abandoned tell them to find another sucker that actually cares about the patients at the facility to come in. Just wow... people on this board are like wahhhh I don't make enough money and in the next breath wahhhhh don't ask me to work extra ever even if the nurse goes missing but wahhhhh I risk my life for my patients... LOL make up your minds.

[JKL33]

3 hours ago, Rionoir said:

Just wow... people on this board are like wahhhh I don't make enough money and in the next breath wahhhhh don't ask me to work extra ever even if the nurse goes missing but wahhhhh I risk my life for my patients... LOL make up your minds.

Somehow I don't see you as someone who can be guilted into taking responsibility for a company having hired a completely negligent warm body who wasn't at work. Trust me, this type can be seen from a mile away more often than not so there's very little excuse for having hired such a person to care for others in the first place.

Now I've just come from your other comment about martyrs so let me ask you what you want from nurses. Are we at fault for not taking unpaid responsibility for others' blatant negligence--in other words, we should martyr ourselves--or are we at fault for being second biggest group of martyrs after teachers?

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

3 hours ago, Rionoir said:

Yea, next time the entire unit is abandoned tell them to find another sucker that actually cares about the patients at the facility to come in. Just wow... people on this board are like wahhhh I don't make enough money and in the next breath wahhhhh don't ask me to work extra ever even if the nurse goes missing but wahhhhh I risk my life for my patients... LOL make up your minds.

Okay, please feel free to bring up and quote all the posts I wrote about not making enough money; I'll check back on this board to find the results.

And yeah, just because I'm not available to be woken up in the middle of the night to swoop in and rescue some facility that hired poorly, well, tough, that doesn't mean I don't care about the people under my care.

 I suppose it wouldn't be a problem though as I shut my phone off at night...

[PMFB-RN, RN]

4 hours ago, Jedrnurse said:

Okay, please feel free to bring up and quote all the posts I wrote about not making enough money; I'll check back on this board to find the results.

And yeah, just because I'm not available to be woken up in the middle of the night to swoop in and rescue some facility that hired poorly, well, tough, that doesn't mean I don't care about the people under my care.

 I suppose it wouldn't be a problem though as I shut my phone off at night...

Just to be clear, the DON had previously arranged for me to be on call to cover any emergencies while she was on vacation and I was compensated for doing so.

    Also there is no company. The hospital and nursing home are owned by the county.

[18millionminutesago]

On 11/9/2021 at 7:28 AM, NotMyProblem MSN said:

This idiot fired himself! As I was reading this, I was thinking he was gonna be found somewhere with at least a half-a**-believable lie. But the dumb*** told the truth!! He must have been one of the ones who cheated his way through nursing school and failed to read the legalities and ethics chapter...only memorized the answers from the test banks with reading the wherewithal. One down, how many to go??

If he cheated his way through nursing school then he would be better at lying. 

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

46 minutes ago, PMFB-RN said:

Just to be clear, the DON had previously arranged for me to be on call to cover any emergencies while she was on vacation and I was compensated for doing so.

    Also there is no company. The hospital and nursing home are owned by the county.

Thanks for the clarification. How's it going with the recruiting for the newly open position?

[2BS Nurse, BSN]

I have been hearing of situations where supervisors are sending Ubers to nurses homes to bring them to work earlier than scheduled (if a car isn't available to them at that time). I would think this is a liability issue!?!