Hidden camera catches nursing home abuse

Hidden camera catches nursing home abuse

www.lancastereaglegazette.com

CLEVELAND -- A video camera hidden inside a Cleveland nursing home caught a nurse's aide abusing a patient as well as other possible mistreatment by additional employees of the county-run facility.

The incidents are recorded on numerous videotapes obtained exclusively by WKYC.

The footage has prompted both criminal and regulatory investigations as well as questions about whether MetroHealth ignored complaints by Steve Piskor that his 78-year-old mother was being mistreated at the Prentiss Center for Skilled Nursing Care on Cleveland's West Side.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Well here's something to make the blood boil, especially if you have a loved one in one of these state run nursing facilities.

Steve Piskor became worried that his 78 year old mother who suffers from advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease was being mistreated at the Prentiss Center for Skilled Nursing Care on Cleveland's West Side. He made complaints but was brushed off and actually looked at as the bad guy himself.

"MetroHealth said I was taking things out of context and taking it too far," Piskor said. "They made me out to be the trouble maker, the complainer, the bad guy. ... The administrator at one point told me accidents happen and mistakes are made."





www.lancastereaglegazette.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

People who prey on the weak and defenseless are nothing more than animals, and they deserved to be caught and 'caged'.

We would all do well to comport ourselves as if a video camera was rolling on our lives, 24/7.

This is sad.. especially as we seem to consistently treat our elderly this way.

Especially sad as one day we will be the ones in their place, hoping that our dignity will be honoured and not abused.

reply to post by LulzCode6


I just hope and pray that this incident...will prompt investigations of all nursing homes everywhere in the United States. I also want those former employees severely punished. I hope the judge gives them the maximum sentence.

Please everyone pray for that 78 year old woman...she is precious to heaven.

The inspection said the facility's administrator "verified that 'abuse did occur'" and indicated other state-tested nursing aides are also involved.

This administrator should be charged right along with the rest of them. Those aides were under his/her authority, and I'm betting the administrator was well aware of what was going on. How disturbing!

thats the reason why i promissed my parents that i will never send them to a retirement home

Same thing happened here in the UK last month:



unbelievable

Star and Flag.

It's actually worse then that.

Senior citizens are not only getting older,they have Medicine that dopers want.

Background checks do not include the question,do you like opiates?

If the person in charge of dispencing the medicine has friends that like opiates,chances are,pilfering is going on.

NOT ALL workers in Senior citizen homes whether State run or not steal.

But stealing Med's from old folk is a serious problem.

I caught workers stealing from my family. I know what I payed for and what was received. I read the bill even though it was a tough time.

Hard to prosecute. They just get terminated.

Originally posted by czygyny
People who prey on the weak and defenseless are nothing more than animals, and they deserved to be caught and 'caged'.

We would all do well to comport ourselves as if a video camera was rolling on our lives, 24/7.

id give you more star if i could. but what if maybe there are invisible eyes watching us 24/7?

Originally posted by caladonea
I just hope and pray that this incident...will prompt investigations of all nursing homes everywhere in the United States.

Sadly, it won't. My brother was in a coma and ended up in a nursing home. We found out one of the nurses was taking his meds herself instead of giving them to him. It took us 10 years to get her license removed as after we filed charges on her she married the counties medical investigator.

Thankfully he divorced her, and took her license away. Last I heard she moved to another state and is currently working in another nursing home with a new license in a different state.

After we found out about her taking his meds, we moved him to a different nursing home. Only to find out they as well were not taking care of him. They left his trach strap on for so long that it was imbedded into his neck to the point his jugular was in danger. We kept smelling something rotten, so we would go over him and over him trying to figure out what it was, to one day finally realize that he had a "new, clean" trach strap over the imbedded one. We filed charges, at least we thought we did, only to find out the nursing home took our paperwork and threw it away, we found this out after he died, in their care.

No, we did not realize we were filing a complaint with the nursing home. We had been told that they were investigators from the state in regards to our complaint about the situation. The nursing home not only lied about what they did, but brought in their own investigators who then lied to us about who they were. Took us months before we realized what they had done, and by then my brother was dead.

Nursing homes are awful places. I told the nurses that I hoped they ended up in such a wonderful place when they were old, they turned white and said they would never go into a nursing home if they could help it. I said that's most likely how everyone who was here felt, and that I hoped Karma gave them a good kick in the you know what.

Harm None
Peace

edit on 4-7-2011 by amazed because: (no reason given)

This made me cry. These places should be shut down or people should sue them for all their worth. There is no excuse for such cruelty. My Mom is 87 and there is no way I will put her in such a place. Luckily she lives in the apartment below me and can do a lot on her own, but still needs help with some things.

I will never put her in a nursing home as long as I can care for her myself.

Originally posted by DOADOA

Originally posted by czygyny
People who prey on the weak and defenseless are nothing more than animals, and they deserved to be caught and 'caged'.

We would all do well to comport ourselves as if a video camera was rolling on our lives, 24/7.

id give you more star if i could. but what if maybe there are invisible eyes watching us 24/7?

Thank you. I do believe that my every move is recorded in a book in an eternal place...and I do try to live my life as if it were so.

Imagine the shock of those who haven't taken that in to consideration?

What we need to think about is this:

How many more such incidents happen DAILY - WORLDWIDE - IN EVERY COUNTRY??? My rough guess: millions of such incidents every day, all day.

This is just ONE patient, in ONE facility, with ONE captured video incident.

A possible solution: Allow ANY and ALL patients who have the means and wherewithal to sign a waiver permitting live video feeds sent to their loved ones/watchdogs/authorities/patient advocacy groups, etc. for continuous monitoring. Even if family/authorities are NOT watching, the so-called 'staff' won't know that and would have to be on their best behavior. Include cameras in hallways and common areas as well.

Of course, you may run into some 'privacy' issues, as well as stiff resistance from the lovely 'worker unions'. Also, there are many in poorer, under-developed nations that have neither the infrastructure or mechanisms for accomplishing this, but it should not be too hard nor very expensive in the core countries/cities.

My heart goes out to the poor woman in the video - and especially to the myriad unseen, non-videoed victims like her -and worse - who suffer at the hands of such inhuman "care-givers".

I pray for them all...

As a person who works in a nursing home, I'm severely pissed at this story, and sad to say it has happened where I work as well. And every time it's happened, I and a few others have whipped out the phones and called the state to report it. Washington seems to be more thorough than Illinois; we've chucked out at least three nurses, seven CNA's, and more than our share of resident assistants.

For the person saying the administrator needs to be fired, I have to disagree. These abuses are rarely "public" as it were. Most often they take place in the residents' room. Even when they occur elsewhere, the administrator is one person - a very busy person - in a facility that has, in my case, over sixty residents and three shifts of ~30 staff. There's no way for the facility administrator to know everything going on.

To the people who have loved ones in outside care, please understand that these abusers are not representative of the whole; there are many of us who actively keep a sharp eye out "within the system" to prevent and redress those handful of people who are abusive (and in this case, carelessness and simple neglect are abuse as well). if you see or just suspect abuse, do not hesitate to call the state right off. Who cares if someone thinks you're a nuisance, you're looking out not just for your loved ones, but those of other people in your community as well.

reply to post by roughycannon


Jesus christ, that was nearly impossible to watch! How do the parents of those kids not go on a killing spree?

Jesus Christ!!

Sadly this kind of thing is very common.

I have two friends who are carers. One was fired because she went to complain about how some of the staff treated residents.

I've been in hospital numerous times throughout my life, and the way some of the nurses treat patients is appalling, especially the elderly.

My Nan had home help before she passed, because she was bed ridden. I got a phonecall from her one day when i was at work. She was in a right state and i was over there in a shot. Two of the carers didn't even bother showing up that day, and the evening one just turned up, made her a cup of tea, put it out of her reach and left. She was laying in her own waste for the majority of the day, hadn't had any food or drink, luckilly she kept the mobile phone we gave her on her bed, she was too proud to call me or my folks sooner......Needless to say, these carers (if you can call them that) were promptly fired....Absolutely disgraceful.

I myself do voluntary work for the elderly. Not in a residential home, i visit them in their own homes and do their shopping, sometimes cook for them, do some tidying and have a good chat. They are the most amazing people.

I want to be a carer, but if i ever saw staff treating residents/patients like that, i'm really not sure i could compose myself.

reply to post by skitzspiricy


One chronic problem is understaffing. Most states have a legal required minimum of staff needed to be on the floor. however, these are the same states that love cutting budget allotments for elder care, so it can be really difficult to reach that number. My facility is relying heavily on the state's nursing agency to send us "temps" - and of course, when you get people from out of town who don't know the resident community, who are just going to be somewhere else tomorrow, problems can arise. Pair it up with the rest of the short-staffed people, who are frustrated and worked raw themselves, and, well...

The staff of these places aren't people who started there because they want to mistreat people. I promise you, pretty much everyone you find in health care started because they wanted to help. It's frankly brutal work, as well - it has all the drawbacks and problems you find in any other work environment, with the added difficulties inherent to the field (no matter how bad your day is at work, I'm pretty sure you haven't been vomited on or beaten with a walker). And then there's the sheer psychological issue; I have seen many people deteriorate as their conditions worsen. One lady who, when I started, used to chat and joke with me, now can't do much more than sip her juice and fall into bouts of uncontrollable weeping, and it's damn near impossible for me to handle it.

This is, of course, no excuse at all for the treatment of others seen in these videos - no matter how hard it is for the people working at these facilities, their fiorst concern should always be fore the residents. But I do think maybe it needed to be pointed out that, with a few exceptions, this stuff doesn't happen just because the caregivers are terrible people (I could make an exception for those goons in the video with the special-needs kids, though) but rather because it really is a sort of occupation that can chew you the hell up and spit you out very easily.

Originally posted by czygyny
People who prey on the weak and defenseless are nothing more than animals, and they deserved to be caught and 'caged'.

We would all do well to comport ourselves as if a video camera was rolling on our lives, 24/7.

Agreed about preying on the weak.
However, the camera thing might get you shunned on ATS. haha.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


I understand that it can be very hard work, about cuts and understaffing, and it can at times be dangerous if you have a volatile resident or it can be somewhat degrading having someone puke or pee on you. I've been in a few situations myself volunteering over the years.

But these caregivers knew when they went into the job that they are going to come across some difficult people and situations. Maybe they did go in to the job with the sole intention of caring for some of societies most vulnerable. But Jesus, if they are being angered so much by their work to the point of abusing, they need to seriously rethink their careers.