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From: Susie.Lee@f222.n271.z1.fidonet.org (Susie Lee)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: patient care during your strike
Message-ID: <15808@handicap.news>
Date: 23 May 91 20:58:49 GMT
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FW> As a quadriplegic who is at the complete mercy of the
FW> nursing staff
FW> and the personal care attendants I would like to know what
FW> are your
FW> feelings towards people like me when under a strike
FW> condition.  From

I have an idea I'll most likely be among the traitorous skeleton-crew who
continue to work. I've been involved in and even encouraged nurses-aide
strikes for unionization and taken on the added workload during my shifts
without batting a stressed eye. (during feeding-times, I'd pull all six
feeders around me in a powwow-circle, ferinstance, or go for the frowned-on
double-padding ((as one under another)) to effect less time during
incontinence-changes and still get to everyone. :)
FW> my own experience the nursing staff in rehabilitation
FW> hospitals
FW> generally are either the best or unfortunately the worst.
FW> I know
FW> that it is not easy work and if it weren't for the nurses
FW> nothing
FW> would get done.  Also what do you think of nurses that work
FW> doubles
FW> consistently?  When my wife was in the hospital the last

I think it's just begging for trouble, breakdown in the worker both mentally
and physically leading to errors that can too-easily threaten the
health-integrity and even the lives of their charges. No good, no matter how
you look at it. Doing doubles shouldn't be tried certainly shouldn't be
forced more than once a week. I oughtta know, I was notorious for it years
ago, myself, but quit that and stick tight and fast to my own rule, now.
And bad-apple nurses are sometimes hard to catch in the act being fairly
good, most of 'em, about covering up their abuses or mistakes, but believe
me, the rest of us hate 'em like the poison they are, just like the good
cops hate having a bad cop in their midst, messing up a hundred good works
with their one bad example!
FW> friend that is a nurse and I wouldn't want to have her
FW> working on
FW> administering drugs to me because I have seen out many
FW> mistakes she
FW> has made as well as her admitting to making mistakes
FW> because of being
FW> tired.  Let's just say inquiring minds would like to hear
FW> your
FW> position on some of these facts.  As I look back I also

State and federal laws and guidelines for medication administration are
fortunately getting tougher. For omission-errors a facility can be fined
$10,000.00 (that's ten-thousand) per day, and other med-errors are similary
watched-for by weeklyor bi-weekly visits to facilities of a
pharmacist-consultant, and in some facilities he/she is around daily. Most
places these days are up against the wall with these threats to their
business and are tightening up on seeing to a no-errors Medication
administration and each doing more about it, in-house. One thing a
facility-resident can do is bring their problem to the attention of the
administrator or assistant adminiistrator who will swiftly look into it, and
have the erring nurse either re-trained by another more exacting and
dependable nurse, or observed for three days for bettering her technique or
let go of (depending what the situation is). When I was going thru, nearly
17 years ago, my nursing school training, I had it comfortably drummed in my
head "check labeling, dosage, method, patient *each three times*" That means
read the labels three times and be sure, thrice-over what the heck you're
doing each step of the procedure! I think some schools or instructors either
don't stress this near enough, or the newly graduated quickly forget and
fall into bad habits all too easily. Either way, those of us who really care
and sometimes literally worry ourselves sick over our charges are happy each
time we catch a "bad-apple" and put a stop to her or at least her sloppy
practices.

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