This is the scariest thing I have heard as a caregiver with DH in residence. A nurse who worked in two different LTC homes has been arrested and accused of killing 8 residents in the two homes. She is accused of using drugs. The news says she worked in two different LTC homes in southern Ontario Canada. I feel so bad for the family and friends of these 8 people. We place our loved ones in what we expect to be a safe place where they will be cared for and this happens. Now I will worry about DH even more then I already do.
This is a sad story, indeed. It is a reminder that there are dangerous people everywhere. But there are also good, kind, and giving people everywhere. There are thousands of professionals working in LTC facilities helping us to care for our loved ones when we no longer can. This is the big picture that we must keep in our minds. If we focus on only one act of evil it extinguishes all hope and we become bound by our fears.
This is a sad story, indeed. It is a reminder that there are dangerous people everywhere. But there are also good, kind, and giving people everywhere. There are thousands of professionals working in LTC facilities helping us to care for our loved ones when we no longer can. This is the big picture that we must keep in our minds. If we focus on only one act of evil it extinguishes all hope and we become bound by our fears.
Marche you are so right but it is still frightening. I have just gone through another week of problems between my DH and a few staff that, when they fail to do their job, run and report him for objecting to the treatment he was given by them and then he is told to go and apologize to that staff member. He is still able to tell me what has happened. I am concerned that he will soon be blamed for all the staff who are not properly trained in care of fronto bv. Will they punish him? Will he be abused verbally? Will they ignore his care? Because he is still able to do his own bed and keep himself clean and respectably dressed, they seen to just not see him and his fears and memory loss. So I have to be always watching and fact finding. What will happen when he can no longer tell me these things?
In the 1990s, a nurse at a VA hospital in Massachusetts was convicted of murdering four patients and attempting to murder two more. Investigators thought she murdered many more patients but the method she used -- putting an OD of epinephrine in IV lines -- made the cause of death hard to detect. I would not be too concerned about a caregiver trying to kill a patient because he complained. It looks like these serial killers in nursing homes are suffering from severe mental illnesses. (I think the woman in Mass. intended to perform euthanasia.)
This lady worked a half hour away from me in the town of Woodstock, Ontario. She's now charged with eight first degree murder charges. This story will likely stay in my face for the duration because this is considered quite local. She appears to have drinking problems because there is an order that she must stay away from liquor and appears to be staying with her parents who also live in that small town.
In the same way that because someone in West Palm Beach for example is insane and commits murders it doesn't mean everyone in West Palm Beach is a murderer, the fact that someone who worked in a nursing home went off their stick and committed a string of murders doesn't mean other nursing home workers are murderers.
We're under enough stress and it's important that we not fall into such worries. The insane show up anywhere and it's rarely their occupation at the time that is relevant to why they lose touch with reality.