Staff members at the city-run West Neck Residence noticed that Glantz's stomach was distended and that she was uncomfortable. She also hadn't used the bathroom for a while. A nurse called supervisor Lora Schwarz, who thought the situation required immediate action and authorized a catheter.
Investigators from the state and Adult Protective Services, which looks into abuse and neglect related to incapacitated adults, cited the home for developmentally disabled adults for neglect and uncovered numerous problems, including medication errors and medical record inaccuracies.
Schwarz says the bureaucratic system is to blame.
Considered by some residents' families as a second mother to their loved ones, she is fighting to get her job back and avoid repercussions from the state Board of Nursing.
In a statement to the board, Schwarz criticized a health system that focuses on rules and regulations and not on patients' health, calling it a "hostile nursing environment. It's stressful knowing anytime you make a mistake there is a high probability of an investigation."
The 24 residents at West Neck have intellectual disabilities, physical impairments and chronic health problems. Many have limited vocabularies, require wheelchairs and have complicated medical conditions.
Full Article and Source:
Questions of Neglect, Bureaucracy Arise at Care Home
What kind of society do we live in today where whistleblowers are punished instead of rewarded?
ReplyDeleteI think the answer only comes with knowing if there was a real emergency and if Glantz was in danger of immediate death because of it.
ReplyDeleteIf not, then the nurse over reached.
If so, then the nurse saved Glantz's life.
Thanks for posting this, NASGA.
ReplyDeletePretty ironic that the very well-run West Neck residence, located in Virginia Beach, has drawn this scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the very same Virginia Beach Adult Protective Services ITSELF dumped victims into public guardianship with Jewish Family Service of Tidewater and Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia, and dumped people, in one case IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF A COURT ORDER into Scott Schuett's now-closed filthy, dangerous adult homes.
The common theme?
NONE of Scott Schuett's six abusive, neglectful facilities with 400 victims was located in Virginia Beach -- our City government wouldn't allow horrific places like that to operate within its boundaries!!!
And yet Virginia Beach Adult Protective Services can use public guardianship programs to dump hapless incapacitated victims into hellholes outside the City's borders -- in Chesapeake, in Suffolk, in Hampton, Williamsburg, or Newport News.
The City Attorney's Office, specifically the seriously ethically challenged Christianna Dougherty-Cunningham, can even hand-pick the ubiquitous guardian ad litem "for" the incapacitated person, Colleen T. Dickerson, and conspire to CHEAT INCAPACITATED PEOPLE OUT OF AN ATTORNEY, obstruct justice, rig court hearings with illegal ex parte contacts, and systematically ignore and retaliate against citizens concerned about the safety and health of the elderly and disabled victims in these guardianship programs.
If you think about it, there's really no contradiction in the over-reaction to the problems at West Neck and VBDHS' direct participation in the Scott Schuett fiasco.
It's all about community improvement, folks. Sweep the elderly and disabled off the streets, so their attempts to live independently do not further annoy their neighbors. Dump them into hellholes beyond our borders. And cover up mistreatment, abuse and neglect.
Virginia Beach does not care if you mistreat the elderly and disabled. Just Not in My Backyard.