not what i really needed to find out today

I don't think any company should be able to create a policy that literally prohibits its employees--that would be staff, including trained medical staff at a senior living facility--from trying to save someone's life and perform CPR. When I say "I don't think" what I mean is, are you fucking serious?

Below cut for triggering material, including links to information about the death of a patient in an independent nursing facility, links to audio and partial transcripts of the 911 call.



Actually, yeah, that can happen. For seven fucking minutes.

I heard some of the 911 call--did I mention the entire thing is seven minutes?--on the radio, which, if you're curious, is exactly as chilling as the article makes it sound. It's not that I don't get a company would try to pull something like this, because companies are run by people and people suck when they can put everything in the abstract; what I don't get is that, in general, a person doesn't suck, and this is about as concrete as it gets.

ETA: as I hit post when I went to get other links by accident.

Nursing Home CPR Case: Glenwood Gardens Defends Nurse Who Refused To Help Ailing Patient

Retirement Home's 'No CPR Policy' Makes No Legal Sense

Listen: Nurse Refuses To Give CPR To Dying Woman - link at the bottom to the an mp3 of the 911 call

Dramatic 911 tape reveals dispatcher’s fight to save patient; nurse refuses to help - this has a partial transcript of parts of the conversation between the nurse and 911

Ethics required medical staff to do CPR, even if policy didn't, bioethicist writes

Comments

[amireal]

Honestly? I'm hoping someone gets arrested, not NECESSARILY the nurse who should have known better, but it seems to me like awfully close to manslaughter. Depends on how feisty the DA is.

[seperis]

I honestly do not know how to work with what that nurse did after reading the transcripts of some of the conversation, not to mention hearing it. I mean, it's not that I don't get employment and everything, but--Jesus. I mean, maybe--maybe--I'd feel differently if I felt like she was literally restrained by policy, but after listening and reading, it's a lot more like policy just gave her an excuse to not do something she just didn't want to do.

I hope that makes sense.

[amireal]

Right? I mean, she refused to give the phone to someone else because it would be what? Unsafe for someone untrained to perform CPR? Nevermind that 911 operators are TRAINED to talk untrained people through it, it was fucking better than doing nothing.

Also there's a quote going around from the family about how they are satisfied with the medical care, I'm calling BULLSHIT till I find out more context on that quote.

[seperis]

So far, the quote from the daughter seems legit:

“I don’t believe if CPR were done it would’ve helped or changed the result,” Bayless’s daughter said in a statement. “This is not about my mother or me, this is about the policy of the facility, and we understood the policy, and I agree with what was done.”
--Source

[amireal]

Something about it seems off, not the least of which is the completely composed and specific statement.

[seperis]

I'm not guaranteeing it or anything, but the daughter's response has shown up in a lot of articles so far. Though for my part, I'm desperately hoping like a lot that this was taken out of context and perhaps said well before her mother died or when she was talking theory or something. *crosses fingers*

[amireal]

I'm thinking it's either taken from before a majority of the info came out OR that the 911 operator stumbled into a situation that was meant to play out that way but was poorly constructed.

..I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But I can't find a better way to explain it.

[(Anonymous)]

Same anon as above. I can believe that the above statement was made by the daughter after her mother's death, after hearing the phone call, knowing that CPR may have been able to prolong her mother's life. I'm not a nurse and I don't work in nursing home but I do work in a peripheral field. I've come across a situation where a family actually pulled an admitted nursing home patient out of the hospital half an hour after they had been admitted because they didn't want them to be treated at the hospital. I think the daughter knew exactly what type of care she was signing her mother up for and I think the facility is catering to these types of people.

[seperis]

...so that's chilling as hell.

[amireal]

Yeah that's basically what I'm saying, though I mean, a DNR will solve that problem anyway? Which is why it sounds so insane? When my mother and her siblings decided to remove the feeding tube from my grandmother and put up a DNR the nurses in the home looked at them like criminals, but they were legally tied.

So I feel like the situation was set up that way on purpose, but at the same time, I feel like I have to be missing something b/c it's not like it's so hard to prevent CPR in the first place.

eta: The decision for my grandmother was a very hard one for everyone involved, so no one come in and argue about the feeding tube okay? The situation was... difficult and the end of a very long road.

[(Anonymous)]

I apologize if my posts sounded accusatory. I think this is a shitty situation that is bringing up a lot of ugly memories for a lot of people.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know that the nurse can be blamed that much though. I think the situation is probably like a real world case of the Stanley Milgram experiment, where the nurse has been told over and over to not do CPR/not to resuscitate patients with DNR orders and this has probably been reinforced by situations where (probably other) nurses have tried to treat patients and been reprimanded by bosses and relatives of the patients who did not want the patient to be treated whether for cost/religious/or other reasons.

[seperis]

This one didn't have a DNR on file, though, and she sat listening to a 911 operator begging her to just find someone who could help if she couldn't.

I'm not at all saying that every situation or every person that doesn't help/do CPR is really skeevy up to actively immoral; I'm saying, reading teh transcripts and listening to the audio, both what she says and how she says it are extremely upsetting.

More hopefully will come out that gives more context to her reaction--I mean, I really hope for this, because honest to God, I do not really want to imagine being eighty, having a heart attack, and someone watching me die while on the phone and sounding super annoyed they're being asked to help me or even find someone else who can.

[(Anonymous)]

I have to admit I haven't listened to whole thing and I'm probably not going to. I just think that this situation is ugly, murky, and no matter how it turns out the result of a whole lot of factors that there may never be solutions to.

[amireal]

I phrased this wrong, I think the nurse was the last link in a chain of poor decision making that may or may not have contributed to manslaughter, I'm not absolving her of responsibility but she's by far the less responsible than the people who created the situation that normalized her responses.

[batdina]

at the very least, someone ought to get their ass sued.

[majoline]

Oh holy everything, that is a thing that has happened? I don't even have words.

[seperis]

I pretty much had the same reaction when I heard it on the radio after work today.

[majoline]

I will probably feel anger later, but I'm still just shocked.

[killing_rose]

Can you please cut this? You're triggering the hell out of someone on your circle.

[seperis]

It's been cut and warned for.

[akacat]

One thing that stood out to me in the article I read: "no CPR" is only the rule in the independent living part of the facility. It is not the rule in the assisted living and nursing home areas.

Theory 1: The place is run by scum-sucking corporate types who are after the biggest buck, and want as many customers as possible in genuine fear for their lives if they don't pony up for at least the mid-tier care.

Theory 2: There actually was a DNR for this woman and the nurse knew it, but somehow that fact has been misreported.

I really hope it turns out there was just a miscommunication about a legit DNR. But I wouldn't bet on it.

[seperis]

I'm desperately hoping for the second, but the earlier articles corrected themselves to her NOT having a DNR, so I'm losing hope on that score.

[lilacsigil]

Just to cover a misconception in one of the articles: the Good Samaritan law in many US states does not cover trained medical personnel, whether or not they are at work. The nurse was entirely reliant on her corporate guidelines, which is fucking scary - here, there's minimum requirements for every level of aged care, which does not always make for great care, but does require emergency medical care to be available at all times.

[seperis]

Re: Good Samaritan

That's a good point.

The nurse was entirely reliant on her corporate guidelines, which is fucking scary - here, there's minimum requirements for every level of aged care, which does not always make for great care, but does require emergency medical care to be available at all times.

It's kind of horrifying that she might have had a better chance in the middle of the street.

[tricksterquinn]

Thank you, that's something that was bothering me in the articles too: Good Samaritan laws are important, and would be relevant were she to hand the phone off to another senior or a random passerby, but are not relevant to the nurse herself. She's legally supposed to know what she's doing.

Corporate guidelines as the best guide available? Utterly fucking scary.

[drunkoffthestars]

I agree that the policy is it's own special kind of horrifying, but to be fair to the nurse at least, CPR is 'effective' in something like less than 10% of cases, and that doesn't exclude people with permanent damage, not to mention the ancillary damage caused by the chest compressions. Doing CPR on an 87 year old is not exactly the kindest thing to do. But it seems weirdly cruel to specifically have a policy forbidding staff from helping if they are so moved.

[seperis]

Without a DNR, the patient de facto chose the path of life-saving measures, including CPR. In this particular case, the argument the nurse was making was it was against policy for her to help, not that it was in the best interests of the patient. That is also what the independent living center is arguing as well; that they are not only NOT required to help, but specifically prohibited from doing so whether or not it would contribute to saving someone's life. That, to me, is a very, very, very big and utterly mind-bogglingly terrifying problem, not to mention on the continuum of unthinkable.

[renshai]

Huh. That's.....illegal in most of Canada, if I'm not mistaken. I know that in Quebec, if you're trained in CPR/lifesaving techniques you're legally required to assist, and in the rest of Canada, Good Samaritan provisions only cover people who aren't employed in a lifesaving capacity (as a lifeguard, I can't refuse CPR to pool patrons - whether a mask is available or not - but if I come across someone on the way home I can't be prosecuted for walking by, although recently there've been some challenges to the extent of the Good Samaritan protections).

(I agree with that last link - ethically, by the standards of her profession, the nurse was required to provide aid, regardless of policy, unless a DNR order was in effect and properly communicated to her.)

[aka]

The transcript reads to me like that woman is someone who isn't actually a licensed nurse, but who works in a similar capacity in non-emergency situations. For example, at my job we have a position that can be filled by a physician assistant, LPN, RN, EMT-I, or nurse practitioner -- and everyone refers to that position as "the nurse" for simplicity's sake. Mostly I say that because as an RN, I know I would identify myself as such to other medical personel. Not just nurse, but RN. An LPN would do the same.

Not that it makes it any less horrifying.