Hello, I am a registered nurse in need of some advice. In my place of work there is patient abuse, and staff abuse that has been going on for some time now, it is my belief that nepotism is keeping the abuser from the receiving the justice that they greatly deserve. The abuse is being committed by a fellow RN. I'll start with the first incidence I know of, the RN was assigned to care for a man on hospice with not much longer to live, the patient had no motor function from the neck down, and had a excessive amount of salivation requiring frequent oral care. At change of shift the oncoming RN found this patient with gnats all over his face with a "kleenex" box wrapped in a washcloth tucked under his chin , this was reported, nothing ever came of it. Another patient the abusive RN cared for required transfer to ED and died 2 days later, the nurse left this patient outside during the winter time for the majority of the shift, Foley bag ready to burst, patient skin reddened from the cold, unstable vital signs. Another patient of this abusive RN simply asked for a muscle rub cream to be applied to his leg, this RN decided to rub an excessive amount onto the patients genitals, this caused the patient a great deal of pain, some of the cream ended up in the patients urethra, the nurse laughed and bragged about it, when this particular instance was reported to management, the nurse manager said "he must have accidentally put the cream on the wrong body part or maybe he looked at the wrong order" the nurse manager even found the instance slightly funny ( this patient does not nor ever has received any cream to/for the genital area). A different RN made a complaint to management about the abusive RN stating that the RN threateningly backed her into a corner in a highly confrontational manner, the manager blew this off, the nurse suggested to the manager to watch the video recording as this event happened directly in front of a camera, the manager never watched the video, nothing ever came of it. Many patients on the unit frequently request/almost beg to have this person as their nurse. Patients say that this nurse is rough with them, rushed, this nurse frequently leaves the floor to smoke and is often not readily available for the patients. The abusive nurse has a family member that is a nurse manager on a different unit, that manager is friends with our nurse manager, both managers and the abusive nurse are friends with the manager's boss, who overseas all of the units in our section of the hospital. All of the atrocities have that this abusive nurse have committed have been reported to management, and nothing has ever been done about it. People are afraid to report to any "higher-ups" because we do not know how deep the rabbit hole of nepotism goes. The ethical nurses who have reported on these instances have been the targets of many forms of retaliation from management, including bullying, hostile working environment, changes to the nurses work schedule, false accusations despite documented proof (time stamps, camera recordings..etc) and many other forms of retaliation to the nurses who try to make a difference. If anyone has any advice on how to proceed please share, thanks... concerned RN
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