Truth66

Well said about the serenity prayer.

I was shocked to read this news article here in Canada today where a judge awarded a Nurse Manager $1.3 Million in damages after she and another nurse was attacked back in 2019. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/van-horlick-court-poirier-lawsuit-assault-nurse-1.6580108 As pleased as I am about the ruling, the article indicates that the likely hood of the Nurse receiving that money is highly unlikely. Having said that, there clearly needs to be more cases where legal action is taken against those who choose to assault Nurses. Nurses are not slaves! https://www.cafepress.com/fritsen/7146653

Thank you for your kind words. I have seen numerous other examples of where even highly experienced doctors were and continue to be ignored. I think part of my frustration is that the vast majority of what has happened with COVID 19 (in Canada at least) should never have happened. We had the SARS Commission which released its reports in 2006. The Commission and its reports were intended to prevent another major incident like SARS. Those reports were essentially ignored and shelved during COVID 19. Instead many of our public officials allowed things like Social Media to spin out of control with false information and were not doing anywhere near enough to combat it. I will give alot of doctors credit who were trying to do their part by appearing in numerous news broadcasts. My biggest overall concern is that if these public health officials don't get their act together (especially with regards to dealing with false information in Social Media) we're going to be in real trouble if the next Pandemic is far deadlier than COVID 19.

I have been posting comments after various news articles and videos pertaining to COVID 19 since the Pandemic began. For the most part, it has been a complete waste of time. The level of toxicity that is out there is mind blowing. It doesn't help when many public officials refuse to take COVID 19 seriously either. How many times have various public officials been caught violating their own public health measures? At the end of March 2020, I sent a lengthy detailed email to every minister of health across Canada, as well as our federal health minister. The email was based on my 15 plus years working in LTC and working through numerous different respiratory outbreaks. Not one of them, or any member of their staff replied. Various emails were sent to different public officials during the course of the Pandemic and the majority of them were also not replied to. COVID 19 Public Health messaging (from my experience) has been a disaster. I was just reviewing some news broadcasts from March 2020 here in Canada and the messaging was that face masks were not worth it. So much for the precautionary principle. If we end up getting another large scale Pandemic that has a much higher mortality rate (such as 10% like SARS), we're really going to be in trouble.

I'm sure almost every frontline Nurse could write a proverbial book on this. It's interesting that most regulatory bodies for Nurses, preach the importance of infection control, ethics, etc. Yet, the reality is that Nurses are pushed to ignore those regulatory bodies on a regular basis.

This is completely true with regards to male Nurses having to be very careful with touch. I remember when I was in the Nursing Program back in the mid 90's (how time flies) and we watched a film on the importance of touch, comforting, etc. with the patients. This older film would periodically show the stereotypical female Nurses giving patients hugs, holding their hands, etc. When the film was over I imediately challenged the content of the film and indicated that if a male Nurse did half of the things that are portrayed in that film, they would likely be charged. The Instructor did acknowledge that the film didn't take into account men being Nurses.

It's been commented with regards to female patients not being comfortable with male nurses, especially if it involves very personal assessments. The same holds true with male patients not being comfortable with female nurses. Back in 2004 and 2005 I was taking a series of full length courses in Forensic Studies. I had the option of going for additional courses after graduation, followed by the testing to get my certification as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE). Being Male I decided not to go that route. For me it would not be appropriate to be doing assessments/examinations on a woman who had been sexually assaulted. For this woman it's all about getting that control and dignity back in her life. Granted I could still have gone for my SANE certifiaction to assess/examine male victims of sexual assault. Still, it's likely that a male victim of sexual assault was probaly assualted by another male. For me it shouldn't be such an issue whether the Nurse is Male or Female as they are equally required to conduct them selves professionally. Having said that I do believe that there are circumstaces where it's far better for the patient if there is a choice.

I firmly believe that one of the biggest reasons why Nurses experience such abuse in their professions is because it's a female dominated profession. Do I agree with this, absolutely not. But the reality is that far too many employers view nurses as nothing more than a bunch of women, therefore not a priority. Here locally, there was the issue of paramedics who experience violence on the job and it was litterally front page news about a month ago. Paramedics here are male dominated. Yet, for Nurses, it's almost a daily occurance with regards to experiencing violence on the job. Unfortunately, I believe that the only way Nursese are going to be taken more seriously and respected is if there is more men in Nursing. Nurses need to be more assertive, yet most employers take advantage of the fact that women tend to be more passive and exploit Nurses.

It's obvious that these different research studies are funded by health care organizations to back/justify their unsafe staffing practices. When ever a nurse argues these situations, the health care organization will quickly pull out these hired gun researchers and say, "According to...". Furthermore, what I've learned is that Long Term Care (LTC) facilities are generally at the bottom of health care priorities. The reason being is that seniors are often viewed by the powers that be as no longer productive members of society. In fact I challenge the readers/members here to check out these two comparisons where they live to prove my point. Locally I learned that for a person to run a day care centre looking after young children, the maximum number of children that they can have per staff member is 6. Yet caring for seniors in a LTC facility, the sky is the limit of how many seniors a staff member can care for. Children will eventually become productive in society, therefore worth the investment. In addition, most children (unless limited due to some disability) become toilet trained, whereas many seniors in LTC eventually become incontinent. It gets very interesting when you actually do the side by side comparison between opposite ends of the lifespan with regards to health care.

I worked in Long Term Care for well over a decade and I can completely agree that Nurses are rushed in order to get out their medications to numerous residents is such a short period of time. The unit that I worked on had just over 30 residents. Medications included the ocaisional injections, inhalers as well as the various oral medications. This medication pass was done by only one Nurse!!! To complicate the administration, the majority of these medications had to be crushed and mixed with puddings, apple sauce, etc. to assist with the swallowing of the medications. Another complication to get through was that the unit that I worked on had the majority of the residents experiencing some level of Dementia. This quite often dragged out the administration time even longer. For a nurse to work in this kind of environment, it's nearly impossible to do all of your medication checks correctly. To do this medication pass usually took me approximately 3 hours. To be 100% honest here, if I was to do that same medication pass, the exact same way that I was taught in Nursing (such as doing all of those correct checks), the morning med pass would likely take me about 5 hours or more to complete. Inspite of all those challenges, I'm proud of the fact that I was still able to catch the periodic medication errors made either by the physician, pharmacy, or others. However, I'm also concerned about how many did I miss because of the unrealistic environment that I and my fellow nurses had to work in. Oh and from what I'm told (as my wife is a nurse currently working in Long Term Care), the situation hasn't changed.

I'm sure that most Nurses could write a book on this subject alone, myself included. Several years ago I was in an attendance management meeting as I had missed sereral shifts. The reason being is that several different facilities across the city were in different outbreaks of either respiratory or gastrointestinal infections. Our facility wasn't, but the Nurse managers had posted notes through out the facility encouraging staff that if they exhibited any of the symptoms on the list to stay home as they were trying to prevent a similar outbreak where I worked. I and a few other staff did experience different symptoms and listened to what these managers were instructing us to. A few months later we were each called in with regards to our various sick days. The union had a field day with this as staff were following the direction of their managers. In addition I indicated that as Nurses, we had an ethical responsibility that if we are sick, to stay home and not bring the infection to work and get others sick. I remember one union official in particular indicated, "Good point, why are we here?" He was not impressed at all with these different managers. What's also interesting about this is that when ever there's various flu out breaks in a community, you will often hear various health officials comment on the radio about the importance of staying home in order to reduce the potential of spreading the infection. Yet, as well know, when ever Nurses follow that common sense advice, they are often disciplined in some fashion.

I worked in Long Term Care for over 15 years as a Nurse. Again a big part of the Inquiry was with regards to Prevention. If we're going to prevent deaths of these seniors of overdosing of medication(s), then both the Intentional and Un-Intentional needs to be looked at. No one wants to see needless deaths of these seniors when they can clearly be prevented. That means looking at the Intentional and Un-Intentional ways that these seniors can be seriously injured/killed. On the Inquiry's website it outlines the legal framework. https://longtermcareinquiry.ca/en/legal-framework/ Part of that framework (as mentioned on the site) is looking at relevant legislation which includes the Long Term Care Homes Act here in Ontario which is here: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/07l08#BK29 Under the heading of Safe and Secure Home the legislation states, "Every licensee of a long-term care home shall ensure that the home is a safe and secure environment for its residents." Under the heading of Duty to Protect the legislation states: "Every licensee of a long-term care home shall protect residents from abuse by anyone and shall ensure that residents are not neglected by the licensee or staff." It's worth noting that in the legislation under penalties it states: "1) Except where subsection (2) applies, every individual who is convicted of an offence under this Act is liable, (a) for a first offence, to a fine of not more than $100,000 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than 12 months, or to both; and (b) for a subsequent offence, to a fine of not more than $200,000 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than 12 months, or to both." Therefore, by allowing a Nurse to be at work who is impaired, with the potential of Un-Intentionally harming any one of those residents is in violation of the legislation. Furthermore, this goes against the before mentioned College of Nurse of Ontario Guidelines on Incapacity. Recently I learned that if a Nurse knows that they should not be at work due to their incapacity and Un-Intentionally kills a resident by overdosing them with medication, they could be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada with the charge of Criminal Negligence. Criminal Negligence carries a prison term of up to a year. So, I'm definitely not capitalizing on the tragedy of what Wettlaufer did to her victims. My primary concern is the safety of the residents in these facilities. If it wasn't, I would never had done the submission to the Iquiry that I did.

You are correct that Alcoholism and drug dependency is not a work injury. If a person has a significant work injury and is taking various medications to treat that injury which would create impairement then it becomes an issue. Many Workers Compensation Boards and Insurance Companies have the mentality of "if you can sit at home, you can sit at work". Yet, they completely disregard the fact that when a Nurse steps foot into their place of employment they are immediately accountable to their governing body. Here in Ontario, the College of Nurses of Ontario defines Incapacity as both Physical and Mental. So if an injury is significant that a Nurse cannot physically respond to emergency situations, then that Nurse should not be at work. For example in a Long Term Care facility taking care of seniors, especially ones with Dementia, there's a high risk of seniors choking (especially at meal times), which would require the nurse to intervene. An injured Nurse can not say to the one who is choking, "Hang on I'll get a Nurse". Here in Ontario, most nurses working in Long Term Care facilities do not do direct physical care on the Residents. This is done by Personal Support Workers. So the Workers Compensation Board and a few Insurance companies will indicate to the Nurse that the job is not that physical, therefore the Nurse can be at work in spite of their injury. Yet most Nurses in these facilities are the ones giving out medications, doing treatments, doing up care plans, etc. If that Nurse is taking various medications to treat that injury which creates impairement, then they shouldn't be at work. It's quite common to see a single Nurse giving out medications to more than 30 Residents on a day shift. If that Nurse was recovering from an injury and was impaired with various medications to treat that injury, how many potential injuries could that Nurse un-intentionally do with that many residents to give medications to? Keeping in mind that this Inquiry was with regards to Long Term Care facilities.

WOW!!! I have just gone through a section of Volume 2 of the Inquiry reports. Starting on page 615, there are numerous pages with regards to Wettlaufers Mental Incapacity which included her stealing/taking Ativan. On one incident she had taken 25mg of Ativan as a suicide attempt due to her depression. On pages 617 and 618 there's eyewitness reports indicating of how incapacitated Wettlaufer was while taking Ativan during the working hours of her shift in 1995. On page 625 in indicates that Wettlaufer was incapcitated as a result of alchohol dependence. After reading these several pages, I'm even more shocked that the Inquiry did not examine impairment issues of Nurses who are at work who clearly shouldn't be their due to their illness/injury and run the risk of Un-Intentionally injuring/killing someone. In particular the role of disability claim denials which essentially starves Nurses into submission to be at work regardless of their impairment(s). In fact my submission included several documents pertaining to disability claim denials in order to be off work while going through treatments. For many Insurance Companies and Workers Compensation Boards, they dismiss the professional responsibility of Nurses and focus only on their internal policies pertaining to disability.

My submission to the Inquiry was with regards to overdose's of medication. If a Nurse is impaired there's a risk of overdosing someone when giving medications. Wettlaufer Intentionally killed these seniors with overdoses of Insulin, yet it could easily have been a different type of medication. As mentioned several times in the reports, the Inquiry's focus was on the "Intentional". If a Nurse is impaired, they can "Un-Intentionally" overdose a patient. One of the corner stones of the Inquiry was prevention, which is why I did the submission that I did. If preventing overdoses of medication then the "Un-Intentional" should have been looked at. When I made references to what goes on with Workers Compensation Boards and Insurance Companies is that this is a growing problem with Nurses being at work when they are not medically cleared to be their due to their illness/injury. These Nurses are having to work while potentially impaired with the medications used to treat their injury/illness when their disability claims are denied. This opens the door of these Nurses of "Un-Intentionally" overdosing someone and potentially killing them.

July 31, 2019 was a huge day in Nursing in the Province of Ontario here in Canada. The long awaited report and recommendations from the Ontario Long Term Care Homes Public Inquiry was released. The Public Inquiry was initiated after former nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer was convicted after confessing to killing 8 seniors and attempting to kill 6 others in Long Term Care facilities (Nursing Homes). The report is 4 volumes in length and contains 91 recommendations in an attempt to prevent similar incidents in the future. I’m proud of the fact that I submitted a 67 page package to the inquiry last year. Unfortunately what I submitted was deemed outside of the Inquiry’s Mandate. My submission was based on a growing reality that Nurses are experiencing stiff opposition from Insurance Providers and Workers Compensation Boards and having their disability claims denied and in essence starved into submission to be at work, when they are clearly not medically cleared to be there. Many of these Nurses are required to be at work, doing various nursing duties which includes giving out medications, yet many are mentally impaired by the medications that have been prescribed to treat their condition. The professional accountability that Nurses have to their governing bodies means absolutely nothing to various Insurance Providers and Worker’s Compensation Boards. I kept pointing out in my submission that if the Inquiry wants to help prevent deaths from overdoses of medication, then they need to address the issue of Nurses working while being impaired. Yet, when going through what I have read so far, the Iquiry focused on issues with regards to Intentional Deaths and did not included Un-Intentional Deaths. Wettlaufer committed those homicides by overdosing her victims with Insulin. Here’s a link to the Inquiry’s website for Nurses here to access the various volumes of the Inquiry to read through. Just a heads up, it’s a lot of reading. https://longtermcareinquiry.ca/en/final-report/

I'm pleased to read that Worker's Comp had actually helped you in your case. Unfortunately there are far too many horror stories out there where people with legitimate claims have been so financially ruined as well as medically ruined if the Worker's Comp had actually denied the needed medical treatments as well.

I completely agree that this woman needs a lawyer. I for one would contribute to some kind of fund to help her pay for that lawyer. It has been mentioned here with regards to her also applying for Worker's Compensation because it is obviously work related. However, there are countless examples of injured workers going through a lengthy nightmare when it comes to various Workers Compensation Board systems. The worst case that I've ever read with regards to Workers Compensation was a Canadian Department Store Manager who was beaten and shot on the job during a robbery. The Worker's Compensation system had put him through a living nightmare which had lasted over 16 years at the time of the article. While hoping that this woman gets the help that she needs, this case should be a wakeup call for all nurses. Not only do Nurses need to have a significant Emergency Fund set aside to help their finances in situations like this, but they also need to have an emergency Legal Fund.

With absolutely no disrespect intended, education does play a huge role in this case. Yes we are talking about poor choices of ONE Nurse. However, what is the educational training of that ONE Nurse. Did this Nurse have proper training on how to deal with situations where she had to do the various overides.? Did she have proper orientation to the type of unit in which she worked? There are countless other examples in which I can illustrate here. Having said that I will mention the teachings of the late Dr. Edwards Deming. Dr. Deming always mentioned that if the system is incredibly flawed, there is limited chance in which the worker can achieve a positive outcome. Managers and Administrators create the policies and procedures in which the workers work in. How can the worker achieve a possitive outcome if those policies and procedures are flawed? I'm not making excuses for this One Nurse. What I am saying is that the system/environment in which she worked in must also be reviewed. An example of this is the Canadian Nurse who killed several seniors in Nursing Homes by overdosing them with insulin. Yes this Nurse was charged and convicted. Yet in a rare case of doing the right thing, the Ontario Government held a public inquiry into Long Term Care facilities in Ontario in order to examine safegaurds and other aspects of Nursing Homes in order to prevent this from happening again. I was proud of the fact that I submitted a 67 page document to that Inquiry last year and I'm eager to read the full report when it comes out later this year.

I've spoken out against bullying in the workplace and schools for years. I just got an e-mail which included the following article on bullying in Nursing. https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=9BA23DFF-8708-47DD-AF99-1E20BD4C368C The New Zealand article references a staff survey that indicated 32 percent of the staff felt bullied at work. That is completely outrageous.

The unfortunate reality is that Nurses are not respected at all. Whether it be their employers, patients, family members, unions, government officials, etc. Nurses who are assaulted are often blamed in some way for the assault. My former employer would often question the Nurse, "what was your approach?" or "what did you do to provoke the patient?" It was the classic, blame the victim that is often used else where in society. My favourite incident was where the nurse manager was routinely blaming the nursing staff every time an elderly resident would assault them. The nurse manager would always ask "what was your approach?" Finally the staff banded together and put pressure on this nurse manager by insisting that she show them how it's done. So the nurse manager on a given morning went into that elderly resident's room to do her morning care. As expected that nurse manager got punched several times. When the nurse manager exited the residents room, her staff were standing in the hall way and almost all of them asked at the same time, "what was your approach?" That nurse manager started to change he tune quite abit after that. Another unfortunate reality is that it's a question of who gets assaulted. If it's a regular staff nurse who gets assaulted, likely nothing will get done. However, if it was a nurse manager, physician, etc. who gets assaulted, there's a higher probability of action being taken

Thank you for your input. I agree with much of what you indicate. However, I will clarify a couple of things. Regarding the antiviral medication: I worked on a dementia care unit with 30 plus residents and I was the only Nurse with a couple of support workers. It would've been nearly impossible to wake all of those residents to give each of them the medication. In addition with only one nurse on night shift with that many residents, it would be impossible to safely monitor every resident after they received the medication. The following day the physician changed the administration time of the medication. As for the call bells: Yes I agree with you that anyone could answer the call bell. However, at the facility where I worked, we were cited by a government expection that the person closest to where the call bell is ringing, must answer the call bell. In adition, the same government inspection indicated that we could no longer answer the call bell from the Nursing Station (which is often done). The government inspection indicated that all call bells must be physically answered in person by the person closest to where the call bell is ringing. The different incidents where I was told to let a different person answer, I was the closest staff member with the next closest staff member being at the far end of the hall. Yet I was still told to let another person answer it.

I know that I have been periodically ridiculed by various supervisors when I intervened in different situations in order to safe guard the patients under my care. One case in particular was during an influenza outbreak. The house physician had ordered every one of the elderly residents to be placed on an anti-viral medication. The medication didn’t arrive to the facility until shortly after 10:00 pm. By the time I had all of those prepackaged meds sorted for the 30 plus residents it was around 10:15 pm. I spoke with the charge nurse and we agreed that the medication should not be given that late because nearly all of the residents were asleep. In addition, many of these residents had already been given their HS sedation a couple of hours prior. One of the principal side effects with this antiviral medication was nausea and vomiting. Therefore, it was also a safety issue of not giving the antiviral medication at that time. There would be no way to safely monitor that many residents. I put on my report (my shift ended at 11:00 pm) what we had done and for the staff on days to get the time for this medication checked by the physician. The Assistant Director of Nursing had me in a disciplinary meeting several weeks later for not giving that medication that evening. I made it clear that it was discussed with the charge nurse and we had agreed that the administration time of that medication being so late was not appropriate. I was warned by both the Assistant Director of Nursing and someone from Human Resources that if that situation arose again, I was to give the medication. How many nurses have been bullied into doing a nursing task that they know full well could jeopardize the safety of their patients? I’ve been in situations where a call bell is ringing and when I went to answer it, I was told to stay where I was by a senior staff and told that one of the Personal Support Workers can answer it. If that call bell was a medical emergency and I didn’t answer it, what kind of trouble would I be in if that resident died and it could have been prevented? These two examples are only a small glimpse of what I’ve experienced in my 15 plus years of nursing. The point is that many Nurses are routinely placed in situations where they could potentially injure/kill someone. One of the key aspects of Nursing is Critical Thinking. Yet, if the Nurse is not allowed to use their Critical Thinking because of their particular work environment, how many of those patients are at risk? How many Nurses out there have been “ordered” to do various things that could potentially harm their patients? Many of those Nurses have done those things due to the high probability of being disciplined under insubordination, even though their Critical Thinking told them that it was wrong.

I often wonder the same thing with regards to how many nurses have left the profession and have moved on to minmum wage type jobs. I have never encountered such an abusive, rediculed, descriminated against and prosecuted profession other than nursing. When my mom was accidently killed in a hospital where a medical procedure went wrong, there was absolutely no actions of any kind taken against the doctors involved. Nurses are often made the scapegoats in an often toxic health care system. I'm sure every nurse who has worked for over a decade can describe numerous examples where nurses were often blamed for something. The sad reality is that many nurses are conditioned not to stick up for them selves. With this nurse who has been charged, she's in a possition where she has no choice but to stick up for self. One would hope that all of the FACTS surrounding the incident will surface.

This case has hit too close to home, but for the wrong reasons. Several years ago I badly injured my back and was put on various medications which created impairement. These were Percocett, Flexeril and Naproxen. In spite of this impairement issue, the Worker's Compensation Board (WCB) insisted that I be at work and they put in writing that I was to do light medication passes. I insisted that I was a nurse and that I am accountable to my governing body. They still insisted that I be at work. Eventually my employer pulled me off work because I was impaired and indicated that I was in a safety sensitive possition. Once the WCB got wind that I was off work, they went nuts and imediately deemed me as non compliant. They retaliated further by denying me more than two thirds of the treatments that I needed to recover. They deliberately sabotaged my recovery and my back continues to be messed up to this day with all of the treatment denials. Had I been at work in the condition that I was in, there's a high probability that I could have done various medication errors, potentially killing one or more of the elderly seniors under my care. About a year later when I was on even stronger medication, the employer's insurance provider started doing the same thing that the WCB did. During that period I was on numerous medications which included 1500mg of Valproic Acid per day. They were routinely dismissing my professional obligations as a nurse. They eventually deemed me as non compliant as well and stopped paying me. It has been over 7.5 years and the battles with the WCB continue and last year, after sending them mounds of medical documents, they continue to insist that I'm being non compliant. I have insisted that I will not intentionally commit an act that can potentially kill somebody. My heart definitely goes out to this nurse in the original post who has been charged, because that could easily have been me.