Glenwood Gardens: Where the elderly go to die from neglect.
From Fox News.
A California retirement home is backing one of its nurses after she refused desperate pleas from a 911 operator to perform CPR on an elderly woman who later died, saying the nurse was following the facility’s policy.
“Is there anybody that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die,” dispatcher Tracey Halvorson says on a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department aired by several media outlets on Sunday.
“Not at this time,” said the nurse, who didn’t give her full name and said facility policy prevented her from giving the woman medical help.
At the beginning of the 7-minute, 16-second call on Tuesday morning, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the 87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.
Halvorson pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.
“Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady?” Halvorson says on the call. “Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her.”
The woman was later declared dead at Mercy Southwest Hospital, officials said.
The executive director of Glenwood Gardens, Jeffrey Toomer, defended the nurse’s actions, saying she did indeed follow policy.
“In the event of a health emergency at this independent living community our practice is to immediately call emergency medical personnel for assistance and to wait with the individual needing attention until such personnel arrives,” Toomer said in a written statement. “That is the protocol we followed.”
Toomer offered condolences to the woman’s family and said a “thorough internal review” of the incident would be conducted.
According to the family, she did not want to be resuscitated.
A woman who died after a nurse at her independent living home refused to provide CPR had chosen to live in a facility without medical staff and wanted to die without life-prolonging intervention, her family said Tuesday.
Lorraine Bayless’ family said in a statement to the Associated Press it does not plan to sue the facility where the 87-year-old woman died last week.
A 911 tape recounts a dramatic conversation between a dispatcher and a nurse who refused to cooperate with pleas for someone to start CPR as firefighters sped to the scene.
The home’s parent company said in a statement that the employee wrongly interpreted company policy when she declined to offer aide.
The woman’s family said, however, “it was our beloved mother and grandmother’s wish to die naturally and without any kind of life-prolonging intervention.”
The nurse’s decision has prompted multiple state and local investigations at Glenwood Gardens in Bakersfield.
Listen to the 911 recording. That stupid bitch of a ‘nurse’ displayed some of the worst depraved indifference I’ve ever heard.
You know damned well she’s trained in CPR. “Wrongly interpreted company policy”. Really?? The standard excuse “I was just following orders”, has become the standard operating procedure. Afraid of getting involved or being sued for being a Good Samaritan? Do nothing and blame “policy”.
Secondly, if a DNR order existed, why was there none on file at the facility? The family doesn’t seem too torn up about it. Lorraine Bayless, on the other hand, didn’t have a voice in the matter.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
That staff has no fucking conscience. Anyone who brings their loved ones to Glenwood Gardens to retire, may as well sign a death warrant.
Either there is something gravely wrong with the the facility’s policy or the nurse was SO really dumb that she totally misinterpreted the company policy. The question is which was it?
Something intrigues me. The elderly live in retirement homes to be safe, cared for and to get a comfortable living conditions with proper medical facilities. But this case seems to shatter each of the very concept.
The woman may have survived if the emergency medical steps were taken. Then why did the “trained” nurse (who should know better how to handle such situations) do nothing to save the lady?
The other questions that arise are:
Was the nurse even qualified ?
What kind of retirement home are they running ?
Is this the condition and policy in other retirement homes ?
The guilty should be held accountable and punished. But it would do little for the family who lost their dear one.
Thanks for your reply to my comment! I agree, of course, and can’t help thinking of Hitler’s reign of terror. Hitler had not only Jews killed, but the elderly, handicapped, and mentally retarded. Killing infants was nothing. Anyone who was a burden on the State was fair game. This is Leftism. Anyhoo, love your blog!
That was a hard video to listen to. I used to work at a hospital/nursing home and I can confirm that policies are very strict and staff are terrified of losing their jobs. Terrified. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the situation) the field of nursing is one of those fields where losing ONE job can destroy your entire career. So people are afraid. This is the general malaise of persons working in the medical field. I stayed in it for one year because I thought I might go into nursing and wanted to get a feel for it. After a year I got the hell out. Never again.
That said, this incident never should have happened the way it did. The fact that the nurse was so comfortable and laid back is heart-breaking. She showed not an ounce of remorse or sorrow EVEN IF she were justified in her actions. She was detached and cold. Heartbreaking. Why did she even bother to call 911?? I don’t get it.
This is a glimpse of what life will be like under Obamacare, by the way. When hospitals are under-funded, under-staffed, and over-worked, folks will lose their humanity very quickly and it won’t be any kind of big deal for staff to just let people die because taking care of them is too much work and too expensive.
KS,
I agree 100%, especially the part about the coming ObamaCare disaster and what we can expect. Matter of fact, look no further than the socialist healthcare that’s been in place throughout Britain. The stories are horrendous:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/11/baby-death-panels-new-study-reveals-gruesome-practice-of-starving-sickly-babies-in-british-health-system/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/socialist-british-healthcare-kills-12000-patients-per-year/
The elderly and infants are dying by the bushel under British “healthcare”. It’s an abomination.
ObamaCare contains much of the same in the form of Death Panels. The Independent Payment Advisory Board, aka the Death Panel, is deeply entrenched in the application of ObamaCare. Its function will be to determine whether or not your medical condition warrants treatment and the privilege of government funding. It will cost an estimated $1.8 trillion annually, family premiums will increase by $3000, and it has already had bad side effects on the economy.
I guarantee it will get so bad that Obama’s successors will be forced to repeal the socialist Frankenstein he created.
SFC MAC