yellowbrickroad

Wow! It seems like Jasco has a real problem! Check this out: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=5928113 Buddy

Update on Lawsuit. The court of appeals ordered a mediation. Mediation was settled and the State of Florida agreed to a settlement. My wife was awarded $97,000.00 when the trial ended. She will get a check sometime today for $53,000.00. The lawyers got around $600,000.00 You can win but it took 6 years The money is nice but it all started because the nurses just wanted someone to listen and too take action. Buddy

Further information: A nurse that works with a friend of my wife also had these charges in the amount of $350.00. She ordered them because she saw my wifes uniforms. Another was a Physical Therapist that works here in town. No a police report was not filed, they didn't seem to be that interested when called. If there are three in just my town imagine country wide. If any of you have this same problem e-mail me and I will give you the number and the extension of the person I talked to. Buddy

Recently my wife ordered uniforms over the internet from Jasco Uniforms. The very next day when I check my online bank account the charges were discovered in the amount of 3X$19.99 and 1X$29.99. I called the companies that were listed and they wouldn't help me with the charges. I went to the bank and filled out the forms and about a week later the money was refunded to our account. The charges were to a computer game company and a software company in New York City. It took all morning to accomplish this. I called Jasco about the problem as I have also learned that three other nurses were hit with phony charges to their cards. Jasco really acted like it was no big deal. They took the information and said they would get back to me! Right! I have all the phone numbers and a contact person with the extension! My wife just called me and she has learned that another nurse got hit for $700.00 Beware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The State of Florida appealed the decision and now the Nurses wait another 1 to 2 years to see if the decision is overturned. Will justice be served? I have a suspicion that somehow this will all turn out for the worst for these Nurses. So much for our justice system! OJ proved that if you have enough money you can get away with murder. He was in our town to play Golf and was asked to leave by management by two seperate courses here.

Many of the Nurses I know that have left nursing altogether went to Real Estate or other than nursing professions. Many state that the working conditions got so bad that they were tired of the abuse by Physicians and Management. The increased working hours that hospitals went to also made a difference. The 12 hour 7 day shift was too hard on the older nurses. After years of working (42 years) my wife said her knees just wouldn't take this kind of abuse. The paperwork involved that nursing has evolved into was another reason for her leaving the hospital and going to work for the prison system here in Florida. My wife is an old three year diploma nurse that attended a hospital based Catholic program. I can remember when we were dating how she told me that her day would start a 6am, classes until 1pm and then they would work in floor care until 6pm, 6 days a week. This has made her a strong patient care advocate but she did manage to supervise many medical and surgical floors in her career. She also worked in a GI lab for some years after she left hospitals just before she went to the prison system. She put in her 20 with HCA and retired and now has only 5 years to retire with the State of Florida DOC. I can remember two incidents that happened when I worked as a Respiratory Therapist in the same hospital. It was about lunch time and I went to the floor to see if she could go to lunch, she was at that time a supervisor of a surgical floor. She was in the med room and was crying. I asked her why as I have seen my wife cry about the same number of fingers I have in our years of marriage. She said that the new DON told her that her standards for a floor supervisor was they must have a BSN in nursing and that she would have to move to a floor position. She had been the supervisior of this floor for 5 years. The Chief of Surgery stuck his head in the door to ask her about a patient. He also saw her crying and asked why. She told him and his face turned beet red and he said he would handle this. He went to the phone. It wasn't long and the Administrator appeared on the floor. I got out of there but she told me later that the Chief had told the Administrator that if this happened he would pull his business to the other hospital because as far as he was concerned my wife ran the best surgical floor in the hospital and his patients did well when they were on her floor. Needless to say she transferred to the GI Lab shortly after as the DON was not happy about her power play! The other situation was in the same hospital. I was charting my treatments for the shift and a LPN came into the nursing station and said, "The patient in 627 needs some pain meds." My wife turned to her and told her that she understood that she was a new graduate but if she intended to work on her floor the next time she better say, "Mrs. XXXXX in 627 would like to have some medication for her pain." Her policy was that her Nurses should and would know every patients name at the beginning of the shift. My wife made rounds every day to every patients room and would tell them who she was and to let her know if they had any problems. She often said. "Screw the paperwork I need to put a face with every name on my floor." I can remember many times when I would call the hospital to find out if she had left for home yet and she would tell me they were short of staff that day and she helped on the floor. She was catching up on her paperwork. My wife is now 60 years old and when she goes to work I can still see the little girl that said she wanted to be like her Aunt who was a Nurse. Amazing people Nurses! They do a job that is thankless and underpaid but still take care of the sick and injured with a committment that most people will never understand. Just Me!

This will probally be a long post as there is a lot to tell you about! Some five years ago my wife and the other Nurses were tired of the "Gunning" that was going on in close management or confinement. It was a very trying time as soon as the lawsuit was filed. The premise of the lawsuit was that the DOC when informed that masturbation was at an extreme level from inmates at Nurses and that it was out of control. The officers did as much as they could to control it but were excluded from really doing anything by the rules and regulations. When the Nurses went to anyone about the problem they were shunned or told that they had to remember where they worked and it was the inmates home. They Nurses said that the noise level in the Quads was so loud that they had a hard time functioning. One Nurses testified that the inmate stuck his member out the food flap and ejaculated almost hitting her with the sperm. This problem was taken all the way up the chain of command with little or no results. They then filed a lawsuit in the State of Florida. The case was determined as a class action suit but was referred to the 11th Federal District Court. From the time the lawsuit was filed all hell broke loose in the Medical Dept. People where transfered, people were moved from shift to shift and the supervisor (involved in the suit) was asked to resign 11 months and 28 days into her 12 month probationary period. It took five years for the case to finally come to trial and it ended last night about 7:30pm when the jury came back with a verdict for the Nurses. The state was found quilty of allowing the situation to continue without action and created or allowed a hostile working situation for the Nurses. The court also found or said that it was a gender based hostile enviornment because the only people involved were Nurses and they were all female. Now about the trial! First and foremost you would not believe the State and the witnesses they presented. They had everything from Sargents to the head of security testify and you would not believe how stupid most of them sounded. Yes I'm a little prejudiced but taken from a objective point they did so much lying that it was obvious to anyone. Most of the officers said that the situation never happens and everything was just great and under control. But when their expert witness got up there she said that it was a prison wide problem. One of the officers said everything was quiet at night because they were sleeping. Another officer said nights were hell as everyone was up. The Nurses stated that the inmates would be standing in the cell either naked or in boxer shorts everytime they checked to see that the inmate was alive and well as it was a requirement for medical. The Nurses would then give them their meds or other medical things thru the food flap. Many of the Nurses testified that the inmate would be masturbating when she looked in the cell. One might wonder why I used the name yellow brick road for my name. The nurses described how when they were approaching the prison the inmate would hear the med cart coming and the foul langage would start. The Nurses described the langage used at them and I don't even used langage that bad. Example: Inmate told a Nurses that when her husband XXXXXXXX. This is just an example of things even worse. All the officers said that it was just an occasional problem and everything was just hunky dorrie! Anyway! The Nurses wrote a letter to the Secretary of Corrections and it to was ignored for almost 18 months and then all of a sudden an investigation was held and tape recordings were made of the interviews but when the Lawyers for the Nurses requested them they were not to be found to back up the investigative report. That was the only thing the state did in relation to the complaint until the trial. I honestly thought we were going to lose because the state had all there ducks in a row but you know that when people are hiding the truth someplace or somewhere it will come out and it did in several of the state witnesses. One of the wardens stated that everything was quiet when he went down there but one of the officers said the noise got so bad that the warden called one night to find out why the noise was so loud. He lives on the compound about 300 hundred yards away thru a forest of trees. The state constantly ask every Nurse under oath who the officers were that didn't perform their duties to stop the problem and I really thought they were going to ask the Judge for a demand to give them the names. Most of the state witness said they couldn't recall anything and used that phrase and it was pretty obvious that they had been coached. When the Nurses were asked to give up the names all of them refused. When asked why they said they would not give names of people that watched their back on the compound. Anyway I could site example after example but the State of Florida will now be a little more concerned about Nurses and treatment of them. It's amazing that this situation continued so long because all it would have taken was for the Nurses to know that the people cared about them and were trying to do something. Oh by the way they awarded my wife $97,000 for damages but I think the lawyers will get most of that. There is a cap of $100,000 for this type of case. There were fourteen Nurses involved and each one got their own award depending on the time involved in CM.