NursingLink

Mistreatment of the mentally ill

Below is an article that was just in the national news. This is not an isolated case. This happens way too often. What do you think the answer is to stop this? What cases have you heard of similar to this in your area?

 RALEIGH, N.C. — A mental patient died after workers at a North Carolina hospital left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding him or helping him use the bathroom, said federal officials who have threatened to cut off the facility’s funding.

The state sent a team Tuesday to help Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro draft new procedures to ensure patients receive proper care.

An investigator’s report released Monday found that 50-year-old Steven Sabock died in April after he at one point choked on medication and had been left sitting in a chair for close to a day at the facility about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh. Surveillance video showed hospital staff watching television and playing cards just a few feet away.

It was not clear from the report exactly how Sabock died. The report states that he was in a hospital bed and later found unresponsive. A phone call placed after business hours to the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner rang unanswered Tuesday.

Federal officials have threatened to cut off funding because of Sabock’s death and a report that a physician punched a patient after the teen bit the doctor.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Tom Lawrence said the state team also may investigate what, if any, disciplinary action should be taken following Sabock’s death.

Lawrence said the Sabock incident is isolated but that officials are concerned.

“It’s not the kind of thing that we in our wildest dreams would expect to happen in our hospitals — in our wildest nightmares, I guess,” Lawrence said.

Sabock’s father, Nicholas, declined comment when reached by telephone Tuesday evening. A man who answered the phone listed for Susan Sabock, Steven’s wife, hung up without commenting.

The investigation released Monday said Sabock died in April after Cherry Hospital nurses left him unattended in a chair and did not feed him or help him to the bathroom.

The report said Sabock sat, unattended, in the room for four work shifts. The report also found that Sabock, formerly of Roanoke Rapids, ate nothing the day he died and had little food in the three days preceding his death. The 47-page report also said workers were supposed to be closely monitoring Sabock’s condition and may have forged documents that said they had.

The state has until Aug. 23 to file a report with the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services detailing what changes officials are making, Lawrence said.

If the center rejects the report, federal funds will be cut off beginning Sept. 1, Lawrence said.

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton said in a statement that nurses may be reassigned to provide more patient supervision. Officials are also considering better ways to manage staff resources, he said.

A patient in New York died in June after she waited in a hospital’s mental ward waiting area for nearly 24 hours. Security video showed her writhing on the floor. It was nearly an hour before someone else flagged down a staff member who got help for the unresponsive woman.

It's really sad the so many people had neglcted this pt and had no heart to care for him. Where are the checks and balances with supervision and administration. I know that if I was not doing my job someone would be running to tell my supervisor and I would be held accountable. Sounds like this gruop of people do not need to be in healthcare!

No one will ever be able to explian this one away.

I hope that we do hear the follow up reports on this. It is worse than sickening. There is no word to describe it.

This is a total outrage.   People who have mental problems can't help it.  Its not like they asked have a mental health problem and the employees are being paid to help the sick and yet they act like they are doing them a favor.  That is why my mother and I are scared to put my sister in any type of facility.  She suffered a brain injury four years ago while having her baby.  She was given an overdose of medication as a result she when into cardiac arrest and suffered brain damage.  Now her brain doesn't tell her body to carry out duties she knows need to be done (like feeding herself, giving herself medication or taking care of her child).  She also has short term memory loss, so if we put her in a facility and she was abused, she would not remember the incidents.  It makes me so angry to hear stories like that.  All the employees working on a mental facility (or any other for that matter) should have their background fully checked.  They should not only sue the people who and facility that  kills clients by neglecting them, but they should also lock them up for murder.  They are living breathing human beings just like everyone else, they should be treated as such.  Not treated as someone unimportant.  It just so frustrating that there are so many people working in the health care field that are just in it for the paycheck and don't care if there clients live or die.  It makes things even harder for Nurses like us who do care about the clients well being.

AMEN

How can you ignore someone like this? How do they sleep at night?

Some of them should have been fired years before. I will never understand how some can get by with so much and not be fired? Who is to blame when this happens?.

OMG!!!!!

There was an older nurse who worked in a State Hosptial once, before they closed them all down, Thank God.  He actually told me that they used to just let the patients have sex with each other, because it gave them "a release, and they wouldn't be so violent".  Can you believe that?  Please God, tell me it wasn't a staff member.  If it wasn't then tell me where the hell was the staff member?

I'm so sorry that this happened to  your sister, in a place where she was supposed to be protected.  I don't blame you one bit!

Unfortunately I am not at all surprised by this news.  I could go on and on an on about how horredous our elderly are treated in the majority of nursing homes or whatever it is you wish to call them

My father was transfered from a very nice hospital after suffering a stroke for what we thought ws going to be rehabilitation for two weeks.  My sister, God Bless her is not medically schooled but has enough common sense to know that what is not right is NOT RIGHT and there was not ANYTHING RIGHT about his stay at this particular place.  As I wrote in an earlier reply, my father was a well educated and well known psychoanalyst who was a very kind and dear man and absolutely did not deserve the treatment he received while at this what I will gladly call HELL HOLE of a place that advertises itself as a luxury live in rehabilitation/nursing home in the West San fernando Valley.

i was sick with cancer at the time of this particular hospitalization of my father's and it was difficult for me to get out there to talk with anyone who was in a position of authority but once healthy enough ny boyfriend and I did venture out everyday and to our absolute horror found that his bed had been placed on a hard cement floor..they had lost his teeth, his watch, his glasses and HIM!!!! They LOST HIM!!!  The patient.  cn you believe that?  they acted as if they had never heard the name and when we made a really big scend still nothing happened.  the buck kept getting passed from one person to another to another...everyone was just too busy answering phones and writing dictirs orders and blah blah blah...l finally I had had enough and really made a huge explosion infront of everyone and I did not feel badly about it in the least.  It took us over an  hour to find him!!!!!!  We did finally find him way on the other end of the hospital in another patient's bed, under the covers curled up in fetal position wearing dirty clothing that did not belong to him and I absolutely blew a gasket.  I launched.  I found the nurse who was in chage of his care on the 7 to 3pm shift and I asked her a series of questions to which she gave me the most mundane generic of all answers such as..."Well, he has been doing very well today, he ate breakfast and had a nap and took his medicines" I asked her what medicines he was on and she had to look it up in the medicine charting book and she gave me a run down of a list of meds that I KNEW my father was not taking.  She ws reading me smeone else's med sheet!  She had to ask me his name three different times.  At that point I demanded a telephone and I clled my sister and tld her to leave work and to ome right away as we had to get him out of there that night otherwise I knew it would only be a matter f days before he was dead from sheer neglect.  His diapers had been put on so tightly that he was moaning in pain.  I mean, it was ghasltly.   Finally, this nurse could see that if she did not do something tht things were aboutt get retty bad for her and she admitted to me that this was her first day working at that nursing home/rehab and really did not know my father at alll and she apologized. She sated she had a patinet lod of twenty two patients wit one CNA!!!!  My sister and I raised hell but the thing is, we were trying to wage a war or at least ellicit some sort of a change against a completely inept and screwed up system where the nursing staff is paid very little and simply do not care about their patients.  i speak enough Spanish thank God because the majority of the CNA's only spoke Spanish or Tagalog and that to me in unaceptable for the patients who cannot speak for themselves.  Not that it would matter really anyway...they are ignored.  My father was not able to communicate verbally but I could tell by his affect that he was incredibly disturbed and frustrated by the entire experience and though it cost us ten thousand dollars per month, we managed to beg borrow and steal (not really steal) to get him into a very nice place where he spent the last three weeks of his life.  it makes me bith sad and angry when I think about it.

I am absolutely dismayed wihthe way our elderly are treated and what was even more disturbing is that I never saw more than two family members visiting their loved ones at either place.

I don't know.  It is a sore subjet with me.  My sister and I did what we could but there were only two of us and believe me, we raised hell.  The staff would cringe when they saw us coming and after getting him out of there I wrote a scathing letter to the hospital administrator but I know it did not do any good.  When I felt better  and after my father had passed, my boyfriend and I paid that hospital a visit and nothing had changed.  People were dirty and not cared for andl left alone and had clothes on that looked as if they came from a circus.

Write to your congress people.  Raise hell.   Visit these plaes.  mke yourself known.  That is the only way I believe anything might change for these poor folks who are so undeserving of the ghastly treatment they receive.  As far as I am concerned, the entire staff of that place should be made to sped a month being treated the way they treated thir patients so they can have clue what it is like to be feeble and depndent and so very badly cared for.  trust me, I am on it and If I have any say and can make just one person's life a bit better, I will sleep beter at night.  Perhpas some of you can do the same.

margeaux s...aka carolyne shapiro

iluvnrsing says ...

How? Do we stop this?

 

We stop it by being present and in full sight of the nursing administration and let them know that this kind of behavior absolutely WILL NOT be tolerated.  We canot pass the buck...we cannot drop the ball in someone elses' lap and expect for things to change.  We as nurses must take and active stance and let it be known tht this type of treatment is completely unaceptable.  If enough of us do so then things might start to cahnge.  Look at the AIDS epidemic.  Thank God for the beautiful people of San Francisco who said..."NO!!!  NO NO NO NO NO!!!!  This is not right and you ae not going to get away with treating these sick people in the way that you are!" They managed to get all sorts of legislation passed and now because of thir bravery many people are living full and wonderful productive lives, free from illness and free from the insane and stupid ignorant predjudice that accompanied being diagnosed wth HIV.

We should really take a look at what the citizens of San Fransisco did and go by their example.  Write to legislators as I do.  rite to your congress erson.  be visable.  We can write and complain about it until we are blue in the face but there realy is sonething to be said about staying in the problem when really the time should be spent getting inot the solution.  Nurses are a tough group of soldiers. it does not take  cast of thousands but man...wouln't that ever be nice.  You wanna do something about it?  I am all game. E ail me @ carolyneshapiro@yahoo.com.  I am more than ready to start taking these idits on.  Trust that.

I know that when my mother was hospitalized, I did not leave her side.  I slept in her room, because I felt that if I wasn't there something terrible would happen.  When she was in the ICU, I slept in the visitor's lounge.   I discovered her DVT.  I listened to her lungs.  When a nurse noticed me listening to her lungs, with the stethoscope I always had in my big huge "hospital purse", they asked if I was a nurse.  When I told them I was, they either left me alone to care for her, or the minority did things "by the book".  I demanded that her foley, never touched the floor and screamed when it did.  I demanded that the resident be called if I didn't like her lung sounds, she ended up with a PE.  Went over her meds and labs every day and with every shift change with every nurse.  I demanded that they re tape her E-tube when I saw that it was slitting the corners of her mouth.  They asked me to leave the room for that one.  When I returned,  I freaked.  They suctioned her without pre oxygenation.  When I went home about every fourth day to shower, I called when I got home and again before I left to go back.  The staff cringed when they saw me coming, and I was quite the bitch, but Mom recovered from what we thought was an inevitable coma.  This was a year ago in November and she finished the courses for her Bachellor's Degree and is working as well.  The best care givers she had were a Nurse named Patrick, who performed a complete assessment while doing her ADL's and even did mouth care!  He was a great nurse, unfortunately he had just floated for one shift.  The other great caregiver was an intern who didn't look old enough to have a period, but treated my Mom like a VIP.  I don't know if this is relevant to anything we've been talking about, not everyone can be there 24-7, but that's my story.  I guess I'm trying to say that family vigilance is the key even if you have no medical training. 

Harder to do in a psych hospital due to Confidentiality, but I guess, visit as often as possible and if something doesn't feel right speak up.

This is so very sad. One of the problems, in my opinion, with state run facilities, is the employees probably have a job for life and that is the only reason they are there. In a decent hospital, they wouldn't last until lunch time rolled around. I am so very "happy" that the hospital is "concerned". So are they now going to form a committee to study the new guideline proposal and how many years until (if) anything is put into place? What a colossal load of crap!! How much drivel do they expect us to believe. And you're right, if we don't get involved and stop waiting for the "other person" to act, this tragedy will be repeated time and again. After my time working in LTC's, I referred to them as warehouses. Some of the pts are put there as a convenience to the family (out of sight, out of mind), some need alot of care the families just can't provide, etc. The thing is, a pt is a pt. They need our help, no matter what and the really sad thing is there is never enough help to truly provide them with the care they need because these facilities only care about $$$. I know that when I worked LTC and the hospital I was told that 3rd shift had fewer staff because there wasn't that much going on at night. Not true, not true at all. I have gone into work before with 10 pts in the hospital and have 12 more admissions come in that night. I had a pt in the nursing home ask to go to the ER and was refused permission to go by his MD. He relayed the message that there was no need to go because nothing else could be done. Before I left the nursing home, I was written up twice and yelled at for voicing my concerns and opinions. I haven't shut up, I have just moved on to other areas to let my feelings be known.

Someone said, and I think it was kaya or rndude, in another post is this.  Sometimes being a good nurse does not mean being a good employee.  Keep on speaking your mind Laura, we all must do this.

I do not recall who said that but it is so true.