MN - To make "work fun" four young nursing home aides abused 15 demented residents by hitting their breasts and genitals, sticking fingers in their mouths or noses to keep them from screaming, and taunting them, according to a state investigation made public Friday.
The four unidentified women, who were working at Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Albert Lea, Minn., were fired in May when the abuse was discovered. The Freeborn County Attorney is considering criminal charges.
Their treatment of the residents, which apparently went on for months, was "pretty horrific. This shocked everybody," said Mark Dickerson, spokesman for the Good Samaritan Society, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., which operates 40 nursing homes in Minnesota. "We've asked ourselves how this could go on and nobody find out. We just don't know."
The four women -- one adult and three juveniles -- were fired after a fifth aide, who was fired for swearing in front of residents, blew the whistle on them.
Three additional aides who witnessed or were told about the abuse were also fired for failing to report it. "We can't remember anything quite like this, it's that rare -- both in the number of perpetrators and the range of pretty bad actions," said Kris Lohrke, who supervised the Minnesota Department of Health investigation.
The four committed verbal, sexual and emotional abuse of residents in their care, said a report by the Office of Health Facility Complaints at the Health Department.
"To them it's just a joke, funny, something to amuse you at work," an aide who witnessed some of the abuse told investigators. "They don't think of it as being bad, they just think of it as a joke."
According to the report, one aide spat in a resident's mouth, sexually "humped" some residents, and sat with bare buttocks on the lap of a woman resident who was in a wheelchair.
One aide who witnessed the abuse said that three of the aides would grope one man's genitals to "get a rouse out of him, as in sexual teasing." Another said that all four aides talked of hitting residents "boobs or crotch, or rub it around" to make the residents angry.
And just in case anyone might think they didn't know what they were doing was wrong there is this little tidbit:
Another aide told investigators that the four talked about what they were doing. It was "making work fun or to get a good laugh," she said. She said they would close the curtain by a resident's bed so they could not be seen if someone walked in. She said the four were confident the residents wouldn't complain because they don't "have their minds."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment