September 16, 2009
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I may have gotten someone fired
As I said in a previous post, my 88 year old aunt lives in a nursing home. She’s been there about 7 years now. She can’t walk, but has been in pretty good shape mentally.
About a month and 1/2 ago she developed a rash. It was pretty much ignored until I insisted something be done about it. So they tried the usual barrier cream, which didn’t work. After a couple of weeks of me complaining about it, the day nurse finally decided to try an antifungal. It actually started clearing up, until the weekend. It’s a completely different staff on the weekends and they didn’t know anything about this new medication, so by Monday morning the rash was awful again. Even worse after the 3 day holiday.
Finally this past weekend I got really angry and ended up talking to both the med nurse and the in-charge nurse. Between what I told them and looking at all the records, it was determined that the original day nurse was using another resident’s antifungal cream and had never discussed this treatment with anyone else, including the dr. who is there every week day. So it wasn’t being used on weekends OR at night! And now they have to go to the dr. and explain why a nurse was treating this (without a prescription) with someone else’s medication.
It did get all straightened out on Sunday and she is now being properly treated, but I went to the administrator on Monday anyway. On the one hand, this nurse was the only one who even tried to fix the problem (there are 2 other nursing shifts in a 24 hour period), but by not doing it the right way, she just prolonged the agony for my aunt. And trust me, it did hurt. I watched her cry about it several times.
After not seeing the nurse for the past 3 days (she was off on Monday), I asked my aunt’s CNA about her today. She told me that the nurse is no longer employed there.
Now I kind of feel bad. I assume she was fired….if not, what a coincidence! But I hope there were other reasons besides my complaint. What she did was pretty serious, but overall she seemed to be a nice woman and I know she has a family to support.
I guess what’s important is that my aunt is starting to heal now and she is much happier.
Comments (2)
You know I would not worry about it since your aunt’s health was at stake. She was practicing medicine on her own without supervision. That is very serious.
Honey, even if she was fired because of your concern for Aunt Margie’s well-being, you may have saved others there some measure of grief.