Desperate Because of Poor Nursing Care, Critical Care Patient Walks Out of Temple Hospital
Over the weekend, a hospital patient came to the picket line pleading not to be sent back inside of the hospital due to reportedly bad nursing care. In response to these troubling incidences, the union for nurses and healthcare professionals at Temple has filed a report with the Department of Health on Monday, April 19, 2010.
From PASNAP
Critical Care Patient Walks Out of Hospital, Twice
On Saturday, April 18, a patient came to the picket line outside Temple University Hospital to speak to striking nurses. She begged the nurses’ union president, Maureen May, RN, who was at the picket line, not to be sent back inside, where she was being treated as a critical care patient. She had two heparin locks (catheters in the vein) and a pulse oximetry wire (blood oxygen measuring device) on her left index finger. She managed to take off her monitors, which sends off an alarm that indicates to nursing staff, signaling death or cardiac arrest. The **point of being in an ICU is for a patient to receive close observation. Yet, despite the alarm, this anxious and critically ill patient was able to walk out of the hospital and talk with the striking nurses.
May managed to convince the patient that she needed to return to the hospital for her safety and took her to a Civil Affairs agent. The Civil Affairs agent determined she was missing from the critical care unit and took her there.
On Sunday, she escaped a second time from the Telemetry (heart monitor) floor, also a unit where she should have been under close supervision.
As May reports from her exchange with this patient, “It is apparent that the nurses have not been able to attend to this patient and created an unsafe environment. In addition to other reports we have received, we remain concerned that Temple has not been able to recruit competent replacement staff. The hospital could have avoided all of these scary incidents by negotiating fairly or preparing for the strike by discharging such critical patients and ceasing admissions.”
Temple Emergency Department nurse Patricia Eakin observes, “These incidences demonstrate that the hospital is not running ‘as usual’ given that the replacement nursing staff has clearly failed to attend to this patient. They should have anticipated this patient’s attempts to leave and been pro-active with measures to alleviate her anxiety. That’s what good nursing is – evaluate the needs of each specific patient, anticipate problems, and plan interventions to address problems.”
Family Member Seeks Advice from Striking Nurses
Today, a patient’s sister came to the picket line to ask a nurse what she can do about the poor nursing care being delivered to her ailing brother. She spoke with Jim McCarthy, a striking Temple OR nurse. Her brother, a gunshot victim, is intubated and on a ventilator, and medication is being used to keep him sedated. He is under the care of replacement nurse “Miss Peggy.”
During the time in which the sister was in the room watching Miss Peggy, according to her report McCarthy, the nurse was handling her brother without gloves. When the sister and her father asked that she wear gloves, Miss Peggy agreed, only to proceed to touch trash in a trash bin and then deliver medication to her brother’s eyes. In another incident also witnessed by the sister, Miss Peggy allowed the sedative to run out, causing the brother to awake, agitated from the discomfort of the intubation.
McCarthy told the sister to file reports with the Department of Health and file a complaint with Temple patient relations. Says McCarthy, “Hearing about these errors from this distraught family member makes me wonder what else is going on. No caring, competent nurse would do the things that this woman witnessed.”
“These incidences should never have happened. These are major red flags for our public health officials, which is why we submitted reports to the Department of Health,” said Maureen May, RN. “These incidences demonstrate that Temple has not recruited competent replacement staff and has had to resort to unlawful tactics in attempt to cover the gaps in patient care. We can only guess what other gaps in care are present given that Temple has put a gag order on its staff, including its managers.”
“The management of Temple has been misleading this community by insisting everything is fine when clearly it is not. There are many reports indicating that the hospital did not fully prepare for the strike or recruit enough qualified staff. Their reckless refusal to engage in fair negotiations toward a reasonable settlement needs to be reversed immediately,” added Bill Cruice, Executive Director of PASNAP and chief negotiator for the union.
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