Archive for October, 2008
Oct 16 Newsletter
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008If you missed our Oct 16 newsletter, you can read the archived version by clicking here.
Hospital Horrors
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
When you’re in the hospital, it’s almost impossible to get any sleep. Even with a private room, someone is always coming in to hang a new bag of meds, to check your vital signs or to clean the restroom. Sometimes they even wake you up to ask if you want a sleeping pill.
Thanks to some excellent investigative reporting, we can all sleep a little better. We can be a little less fearful that the angel of mercy who’s waking us up has a less than angelic intent. In a joint effort with the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times published the chilling results of an investigation into nursing regulation in California. In their article, Criminal Past is No Bar to Nursing, Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber exposed an alarming pattern of dozens of nurses who remained licensed to practice in Califonia despite convictions that included sexual offenses and even attempted murder.
The investigation revealed that since 2002, the nursing board had failed to act in more than 115 cases where the nurses had three or more convictions. In 24 cases, they had at least five convictions. In some cases, the board had failed to act when the nurses had been convicted of sexual offenses or Medicare fraud.
In an update published Oct. 11, the team reported that California regulators have announced emergency measures to investigate the criminal backgrounds of all registered nurses in the state. According to the article, "Effective immediately, the state nursing board will ask all nurses renewing their licenses whether they have been convicted of any crimes in recent years."
Ornstein and Weber reported that 40% of the active nurses in California were licensed prior to 1990, the year in which the fingerprinting requirement was established. The Board of Registered Nursing is now developing emergency regulations to obtain fingerprints from all nurses licensed before 1990. Applicants who are seeking to renew their nursing licenses will now be asked to identify whether they have been convicted of a crime, a question that is asked of people when they initially apply for a license.
My interest in background checks is not purely academic. During a hospital stay in my younger days, I was rudely awakened by a young man who entered my hospital room wearing scrubs and carrying a clipboard. His failure to turn on the light prior to his exam should have been a clue. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination, except to say that the guy was not a physician. He was not a nurse. He was part of the housekeeping staff. Although I was still groggy, I slugged him and reported his behavior. He was disciplined and I was relieved that my hospital bill did not include a charge for the unauthorized exam. Background checks of all personnel might have prevented this.
This post is not meant as an attack on the vast majority of dedicated nurses who work long hours under stressful conditions performing sometimes distasteful tasks. They truly are angels of mercy and I am grateful for their care.
The members of the media take a lot of heat for their sometimes frivolous pursuits. I want to take a moment to commend the courageous and tenacious efforts of investigative journalists like Ornstein and Weber and others at the Los Angeles Times. They work tirelessly and give selflessly in pursuit of truth and justice. They make the world a safer place for us all.
Deadly Details
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
Imagine this. You’re a young woman in your thirties going about your daily life. You’re working for yourself, seeing friends, going for coffee. Then the phone rings.
It’s your grandmother’s nursing home calling to tell you that your grandmother died suddenly during dinner. The news is shocking and heartbreaking enough. Then they drop the other shoe. They don’t know what to do with her body.
You know that your grandmother made final arrangements, but nobody knows what those arrangements are. Did she want to be buried or cremated? Did she pay in advance? Is there someone you should call to pick up her body and take it to the mortuary? The nursing home has none of this documentation in her file.
This is totally unexpected. Although your grandmother was elderly, she had not been in ill health. You need to call your mother and tell her about her mother’s passing and ask her what to do with your beloved grandmother’s body. Your mom is on a cruise and you are unable to reach her by phone. What do you do?
This is not a hypothetical case. It happened last month to someone I know. Don’t let it happen to you. Take the time to organize the practical details for yourself and your loved ones. Write down the location of your last will and testament as well as any funeral, cemetery and eulogy information. Communicate with members of your family, especially when you are traveling or incommunicado.
In other blog posts, I’ve mentioned The Senior Organizer by Debby S. Bitticks, Lynn Benson and Dorothy K. Breininger. This workbook allows you to document personal, medical, legal and financial information about yourself and your loved ones. You can find The Senior Organizer in our Amazon Associates store.
Sept 25 Newsletter
Thursday, October 9th, 2008If you missed our Sept 25 newsletter, you can read the archived version by clicking here.
Freeway Fiasco
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
It’s been almost 35 years since my father died and I still can’t look at pomegranate without getting misty. One of my treasured memories of my dad was him sitting in his bathrobe methodically peeling away the pomegranate seeds and putting them in a small green bowl.
Earlier this year, my honey lost his mother. Sorting through her clothing was a bittersweet experience. We packed the car with her glittery sweaters, her nightgowns and her leather jacket and set out on our 40-mile ride home.
Five minutes into our commute, we had a flat tire on the 405 freeway. Assuming he was gifted at gauging the speed of oncoming cars, my dearly beloved was about to fling open his car door and step out into traffic. All I could imagine was those breaking news bulletins–the ones where the driver careens into the stranded travelers stuggling to change a tire.
Fortunately, I’m great in a crisis. When necessary, I can also channel my Inner Drama Queen. Summoning my most ferocious voice, I yelled, "Do NOT make me call your daughter and tell her that I’m sitting here with her dead father and car full of her dead grandmother’s clothes." So, maybe it wasn’t my most enlightened utterance. It was effective.
Once traffic eased up a bit, we were both able to get over to the shoulder of the freeway. This was still cold comfort as 18-wheelers whizzed by our ears. One person texting or looking down to change a CD was all that it would have taken to turn us into a highway statistic.
We were fortunate that we had roadside assistance, but we still had to toss all the clothes from the trunk into the passenger side of our car in order to get to the tire. We then had to make room for the flat tire which was larger than the spare. I was grateful that we made it home safely, and I sincerely hope this never happens to you.
Do not overload the trunk and backseat of your car. Make sure you have some kind of roadside assistance and keep your cell phone charged. Keep your wits about you, and if you’re so inclined, ask your guardian angel along for the ride.