Hidden camera catches nursing home abuse

reply to post by amazed


I am so very sorry that happened...the only consolation for loved ones....we have...after they have passed on is that they are in Heaven wrapped in the arms of an Angel....and healthy again....totally surround by love.

reply to post by LulzCode6


clearly these jobs need to go to those who would appreciate them and who are capable.
my brother works in a care home, nothing like that goes on there as far as i am aware, but we often chat about his work, and he tells me about how certain employee's like them to be in bed and out of bed by certain times.

we both agree that it is wrong and he has voiced his opinion at work, why do workers who work at these places treat them like prisoners? it is their home, they are freee people, who can go to bed and get up when they bloody well want.

It is tragic and sad to mistreat anyone with Alzheimer's, but that being said, there is another side to the story.

I worked as an aide in nursing homes for a few years and the pressures they are under is unimaginable. You arrive in the morning and you are given a list of 10 people to get up, dress, bathe and some of them feed and the rest bring to the dining room. Under normal, human conditions, like if you were in these people's homes it would take about 20 or 25 minutes to do everything you need to do with each one of them, but because everything is so scheduled and institutionalized, there are deadlines for everything. They must be up by such a time, they must be fed by such a time, etc. As a result you have about 10 minutes to spend with each of them to go through the whole thing. Forget about if something unexpected comes up, like a toileting accident. There is no extra time for it even though it has to be taken care of. On top of that, while you are in the midst of giving routine care, the nurse breezily comes up to you and says, 'oh by the way, while you're at it, could you take vital signs on 'Wing B'? - which has about 20 patients. Vital signs is blood pressure, pulse and respirations. It takes about 5 minutes to do it with each one and you're supposed to just, 'fit it in' somewhere.

Meanwhile what are the nurses doing? They are sitting at the nurses' station drinking coffee, writing notes and talking to each other about what they did that weekend. If you get slightly behind they have no compunctions about yelling at you in the most disrespectful way in a voice that implies you are some kind of idiot because you can't do the impossible. It's like they finally have someone beneath them on whom they can take out their notorious resentment against doctors for the way they are belittled, so they turn around and milk it for all it's worth and do it to you! And does it ever occur to them to get off their fat a$$es and HELP you if you are running behind? Of course not. It's not their job.

I was once giving routine care to a woman with emphysema who also at that moment had diarrhea. She was constantly getting out of bed to use the commode and the effort had her completely exhausted so I decided to just park myself in her room for awhile to try to be of assistance. Well! The nurse came in and saw me and acted like I was taking a break. She was livid because I was behind in my work. By the way, I had already told her earlier about this woman and asked her to check on her and she hadn't. Well by the end of the night the ambulance was there to cart this woman off to the hospital because she was in bad shape. But had the nurse done anything about it except yell at me? No.

So, it's easy to say anyone who would abuse an old person should be put in a cage and easy to become enraged at seeing abuse. But this kind of thing goes on not infrequently and it's not because aides are evil monsters. It's because the working conditions are horrible. And all the pressures run downhill and land on the aides.

The really sad part is that even if the nurses and staff don't abuse them they are still locked up in rooms with very little possessions and are looked after by complete strangers. I find the whole situation incredibly disrespectful that they lived their whole life, in most cases honorably, and then are forced into living in (besides not being housed with convicted murderers and rapists) what is little more then a prison. I understand that they need care, but I personally would rather be honorably sent adrift on a raft or iceberg when I can no longer care for myself then suffer the indignities and sometimes abuse of living in a nursing home. That's just me, i know, but there must be a better way to care for our elders. I also understand that most nurses that take care of the elderly are good people that truly want to help them, but I would not be able to trust my loved ones' well being to strangers that could quite possibly have bad days and get frustrated or could just be sadistic in nature. If that were my mother there wouldn't be any legal case filed. I would go in there find the nurses who did it and ring their worthless little necks. Thank god I have already decided that I will never willingly admit a loved one into one of these places.

Yea, this isn't much of a secret, or a breaking story or anything. Whenever facilities are constructed with the intention of "looking after" the mentally-ill or weak, it is always abused. Always. Obviously exceptions are everywhere, but all it takes is one. One person, or one incident, and like a negative energy, contagious disease or evil force, the entire facility is overrun with insanity and abuse.

I remember reading a story (I believe on ATS) where part-time students were employed at a nursing home, where they abused the patients horribly. Beatings, mental and emotional torture, basically just use your imagination and these people probably did it. They spit in patient's mouths, forced them to eat waste, stole from them.. etc.

The early sanatoriums and asylums circa 1900 to the 70s or so, is evidence of the fact that humanity, let alone America or the west in general, is not capable of taking care of it's own. There are some rather brutally terrifying stories out there, which will sober you fast if you haven't been keen on this topic.

Sadly, this abuse is common. My grandmother was in a home and subject to an enormous amount of abuse...

in all honesty I can't say that I wouldn't throw consuela on the floor and kick her g-damn face in.

Wait! What?

Piskor said it took only a few days to capture potential abuse. But he let the camera roll for two months before taking the videos to the nursing home because he didn't want MetroHealth to dismiss the abuse as an isolated incident.

Read that again... Her son said it took only a few days to capture the abuse but he let it go on for TWO FRICKING MONTHS before he did anything about it? Seriously? Sounds like the son was more concerned with proving that the nursing home was at fault than stopping the abuse of his mother! Poor lady, her caregivers abuse her and her son does too...

It may not be as bad today as when I worked at a nursing home, but I wouldn't be too surprised.

Over thirty years ago, but my kitchen job didn't isolate me enough from the insanity. The idiots located the punch-clock where we punched our timecards, deep into the facility. So, I had to walk by many rooms, and hear many ugly things, just to get to the darn thing each day.

Actually, I can't relate all the crimes I witnessed that I was told were "OK". Once, I finally had enough, and went to the head-nurse to "report" what I saw. A patient who was on oxygen made a rather ugly "hoarse" sound when they breathed through the apparatus. The nurse, or aide ordered her to "shut up" over and over. For probably five minutes as I waited for the dumb clock to kick over to eight o'clock, the pathetic patient held her breath to be quiet, and then finally let loose again, only to be shouted at, and threatened. Something like, "I told you to shut up! I'm going to pull that ##$% tube out of your face, and put (something else) in!"

Another time, a couple nurses were doing some very "risky" behavior together in a room as I passed by. Looked "consensual", but the patient in the background caught my eye, and she had tears running down her face.

Another time, one of the patients in a wheelchair, with a cain (I assumed it helped him get up), would beat other patients with his cain, as nurses looked on laughing. I actually had to pause in the hall to wait for this mischief to stop, so I could pass by, to get to the clock. I recall on old fellow's eye bleeding afterward, and one of the aides telling him to "be good" now, because nurses were nice enough to put up with him, but other patients might not be so nice.

I was young, and because this was an everyday thing, believe it or not, I assumed things were just that way. My complaint was laughed at, with the head nurse telling me to "get back to the kitchen". Never mind my shift was over, but I got the message, like, kid, mind your business!

A couple years later my elderly great aunt came to live with us. She was doing fine, but needed extra care. My mother found a home she thought would be OK, but the old lady was dead three months later. Maybe that place was OK, but at the time, I wondered if maybe the same sort of thing was going on, and it killed her. She sure didn't last very long.

Maybe this is just a reflection of a very ugly side of human nature. I would still like to think this is not the "norm", but if it is more about who "we" are, as a species, than maybe there isn't much hope after all.

JR

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman


Read that again... Her son said it took only a few days to capture the abuse but he let it go on for TWO FRICKING MONTHS before he did anything about it? Seriously? Sounds like the son was more concerned with proving that the nursing home was at fault than stopping the abuse of his mother! Poor lady, her caregivers abuse her and her son does too...

Sometimes you need to stay the hand of retribution to make sure the blow does the most damage.

Very sad that these people do not have values. They shouldn't work in nursing homes. They should be charged civil and criminal cases.