TL;DR
Old fsa black  man makes multiple fraudulent assault claims against nurses, gets one suspended and another nearly arrested. His FSA family threatened the nurse, and will likely file a lawsuit and go after her RN license. Cops can be dense.

People wonder why I'm getting out of nursing. My ex is an RN in California, and currently works in a skilled nursing facility. Last week one of the residents (an old black fsa man) accused a floor nurse of "hitting him". It was an obvious lie, but the nurse was suspended for 3 days without pay pending investigation. Yesterday, the old man ran out of cigarettes and was pissed when the DON wouldn't provide replacement cigarettes for free. This morning, the DON came in and found the old man on his bathroom floor covered in shit after having fallen. The DON assessed him, helped him into a wheel chair with 2 other nurses, and helped him to the shower to clean him up. His physician was notified, and an incident report filed. Apparently a few hours later, the old man called his nephew, and accused the DON of "hitting him and pushing him on the floor". The nephew immediately called LAPD and reported it, then he and the residents daughter drove to the facility and verbally assaulted the DON, and threatened to "get her license taken away" and " find her at home and fuck her up". The cops arrived 5 minutes later, cuffed the DON, and started investigating the claim. One cop wanted to arrest the DON, and said " it's not a big deal, charges will be filed, but if you're innocent you won't be convicted". He had no clue how that would affect her license and livelihood. It finally took the  administrator, and half a dozen nurses and other employees to convince one of the 3 cops that showed up it was a fraudulent assault charge. Apparently the old man told a social worker " he didn't like the don and wanted her fired" yesterday after the cigarette incident.  Afterwards, the old man was sent out for a psych eval, and his family was served with eviction paperwork from the facility. The DON gets to go home tonight, but who knows what sort of lawsuit or license issues she's going to have to deal with.

Ah the joys of LTC. See, thats why it sucks to be the DON and most have a 1-2 year turn over rate. Thats also why I have my own malpractice insurance too.

EDIT:

This is also why documentation of LOC, demeanor, and statements are so important. Glad I am leaving clinical nursing.

I'm in the best place to be an RN...the O.R.

The patients come in sleepy and they leave the same way.

I had a whole thing typed out, but I'd likely violate COC

Suffice to say, fuck those kind of people with a red hot poker.

House supervisor. That's the best place to be.
FSA families are the worst.
At a community event, one of them bragged to a black RN friend of mine about how she was making the white people (nurses) wait on her.
They are scum.

Glad to no longer work in patient care or the ER anymore.

Cameras. Everywhere. Cameras.

Cameras and patients generally do not mix.

OMFG, what an absolute goat-fuck!  Were the cops that stupid?  Apparently so.  Shit like that happens every day in any decent-sized hospital.  Demented and/or delirious patients.  Major psych problems.  One hospital I'm on staff at has a locked geriatric psych ward.  You should hear some of the accusations!  The vast majority of nurses I work with work like dogs.  

If a nurse wanted to harm a patient, they'd have about a hundred ways to do so and get away with it.  Pushing the patient to the ground isn't one of them.

Dayam.  Like a childcare center, you need cameras to record everything and to protect yourself from allegations of misconduct.

Good point. Around here it's the same way with LTC administrators. Good documentation in this case allowed the facility to send the resident out, and ultimately saved the DON from arrest. That doesn't mean the DA can't decide to file charges at a later date though. For the guys bringing up security cameras, they wouldn't have helped since they aren't  allowed in resident rooms or bathrooms. Yes the one cop really was that stupid, totally saw no harm in arresting the DON. The 3rd cop to show up was a seargeant, and he saw through the accusations pretty quickly.

We have shitloads of cameras in every common area, hallway, etc. It has saved many of our asses.

Fuck.  That.



I like my intubated and sedated patients.

Nurses that work the ER have my deepest respect.

I get to hear the grind of it.  There's a reason for the high burn out rate.

Hospital or LTC? Fairly rare in LTC but not unheard of in hallways. Still wouldn't help for the patient's room, especially the bathroom.

Hey, do you happen to live in Maine, once were infantry in the military, and are now a nurse?

Psych hospital.

The DON should make him an offer he can't refuse.

ive been in ER 13 years. the average career of an ER nurse the last i heard was less than 3 years. its taxing for sure. i hate the FSA. if i had a dollar for everytime somebody was going to call the news or sure me, i wouldnt have to work anymore.

For us, its the rich folks we are most worried about. Mommy didn't get her bath at exactly 7:17pm, nurse must be neglecting her.


Tonight we had a family up in arms yelling at the staff. Apparently they think that their 90-something y/o mom should die peacefully, and didn't like that she was gasping (which is completely natural for someone dying of end-stage pulmonary diseases) so they rescinded all of the advanced directives that the patient wanted (they were ready to go), we intubated, and now they don't like that they are still not "peaceful" on the vent. So I was in the room doing blood work and they are sitting around complaining how everyone in the hospital doesn't care, just wants paychecks, incompetent, etc.

Lol I had no idea about any of this.......sounds like you are treated like cops are.

This.

NY, check.

The part that frosts me...

These types get the same level of care as the old geezer that worked hard and was a productive member of society all his life.
Same productive old geezer who just lost everything he has to the nursing home to help defray the cost of his care.
Meanwhile, the tick in the next room pays nothing. And demands more...

FSA at birth, FSA throughout adulthood, FSA in death. You subsidize it all.

I did 6 years in ER ( Miami) and 6 in ICU  

FSA
Gangbangers
Violent drunks and druggies
Irate family members
Escaping prisoners
Defending co,workers being attacked
At least back then, you were going to have to fight.
Florida ended up,passing a law regarding attacking ER/EMS people-- felony?  I don't remember

It can be taxing for sure but I have never had LEOs not use the tiny amount of common sense brass allows them to use and harass us. That said, LAPD, who is suprised?

My immediate family has two nurses; my wife and youngest daughter and we have a few more that are nieces, cousins, etc. After 18 yrs my wife is now working as a back end case manager in a cube, she loves it but the work load is staggering, my daughter just quit a physc hosp after 9 mths because she kept getting beat (punched, hit, etc) beat on and you cant even flinch towards protecting yourself as far as self defense, a co worker, an ex leo male rn was being pummeled by this guy whoe went off and finally he hit back in self defense and of course, they let him go on the spot. Dealing with the public as an RN is tough gig unless they are sedated. My highest respect goes out to ALL RN's.

16 years in psych nursing. I now work from home calling Medicare seniors all day as a health coach.

There is no fucking way I would ever go back to working the floor. Everything said in this thread
is true x 10. Nursing is just like being a cop, no glamor whatsoever, and everyone fucking
hates you until they need something.

My first impression is that more teaching needed to be done about end of life.  With end stage lung diseases, the patient is probably never going to appear comfortable.  If they appear comfortable, they're probably hypoventilating and about to check out.

Some families are crazy no matter what you tell them, but teaching goes a long way.

I used to think I wanted to be an ER RN. I'll stick to ortho. To much drama. A Good ER nurse is badass though.

 I'll have to remember all this that y'all have to put up with when I think I have a bad day!

Thank God for the military- at least there's some discipline and respect most of the time.

That's a whole lot of fucked up.  

The ER is where I finally learned to hit hard to soft and soft to hard.

Guys like me ( I was,pretty common for my time and place) would absolutely be fired now.
We defended ourselves with force

That sort of conduct doesn't fly around here.
We protect our nurses here...

If a patient attacked me, I'd defend myself with force.  I am not a punching bag.

I know an old Navy nurse, long retired, who brags she's " ...Not afraid of anybody. 'Cuz she has fought the best the Marines have to offer..."
I asked one of her companions how often they had to put up with drunks being belligerent?
"...Oh, not too often. There were usually an orderly or two or three who could "explain" the treatment program to drunks"...

Cameras in patient care areas would get your Hospital fined and it would probably lose its certification.

With Obamacare there is a requirement for patient satisfaction.  If too many patients are dissatisfied with their care in any way, they can reduce a hospital's level of Medicaid and Medicare payments.  If they continue to have low satisfaction surveys, they can lose certification entirely.  We are currently on a hiring freeze at my hospital.  No new FTE's, period.  You can replace but not add.

Along comes the Patient Satisfaction Department.  A whole new department was created and FTE's created for it so they can manage the patient experience.  

It doesn't matter that you came in dead and are walking out alive after only a few days, it's all about how you feel you were treated.

 

Couple weeks ago I was in the ER for kidney stones. I, of course, was as nice and polite to the ER staff as I could be since (1)I'm a decent guy, (2)they have a hard job, (3)they're my only hope of not being in pain anymore.  

Across the hall some lady was bitching that, essentially, a nurse hadn't stopped by every 5 minutes to give them the status on a test that had been run on her husband. A test that apparently took 2 hours to run. She did this in the passsive-aggressive way of loudly talking about it to her husband and cursing rather than actually talking to a nurse. My nurse finally went to go talk to her and got bitched at.

Lady got escorted out by security. I agreed with the nurse that the lady was not a nice person at all. And little ol' nice me got all the blankets and ice cubes (which I wasn't supposed to have) that I wanted.

Never understood why people get mean with people who are their only real hope at times.

Maybe the nurse should have claimed that the patient assaulted her


 

After being around a nursing home for a bit, I can't belive what happens there and what the nurses and staff put up with. Crazy!

TL:DR  is TL:DR

It is generally "frowned upon by the hospital" for medical personnel to press charges in most cases. I have some stories regarding the "protection" the hospitals will give. (read: none).

That's scary.

FYI: LPN's do the same work in most settings and make up probably more than 90% of the LTC caregivers.

My wife did 8 in the ER and 2 in Trauma ( south Sac,  FSA central for our area ),  she's now back to med surge and happy again after getting a bad case of the burnout.


 

Because they are entitlement minded and extremely self-centered.  They have not matured as normal adults and are stuck in that childhood development phase were they do not care about anything else other than their own satisfaction.  They have been allowed to fester and reproduce for decades and the population has increased to the point where they are impossible to avoid and are protected to the point that Darwin can not thin the herd.

The few times I have ended up in an ER I was at the very grateful that there were people with the skills to put humpty dumpty back together.  I made sure to express that to them.

Private pay/facility?  Kick his ass out.

Me and the wife are suspended RNs right now.  Crazy psych bitch with daddy issue went to war on us