Having worked in nursing homes as a teenager, in the roles of nurse's aide, housekeeper and staff cook, I have seen firsthand the way wards operate. After dinner, there is a rush to bath and bed the patients by 10/10:30pm. This allows for bed checks and write ups at the end of the 3-11pm shift. Any patient who shows signs of agitation is dosed with a sedative. Such scenarios are common and right out of the film One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Assault with intent to
Dad was taken to the ER last night and remains under observation after he assaulted two more attendants and a wheelchair bound patient yesterday. Clearly, the medication the nursing home staff has put him on has only agitated him more. He was not, however, the only patient from his dementia ward to be rushed to a geriatric psych ward. Other patients (and I am not sure how many) were also having an adverse reaction to the anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety drugs administered on his ward.
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Is there no independent inspectorate?
There have been a couple of instances of malicious administration of wrong dosages and inappropriate medication in old people's care homes in the UK, most particularly in Devon recently.
If a whole lot of patients all have bad reactions at once, someone does need to look at it in case there is malice involved, not that incompetence is any more acceptable.
There are often better medications specific to dementia, and the anti-psychotics probably would not pass muster as "best practice" in the UK today.
Expert analysis of a hair sample could give a history of what your father has actually been dosed with, over a couple of months. If this doesn't match what's on the record, or throws up a drug that wasn't prescribed or which shouldn't even have been available on his ward, then whatever authorities you have, should be notified, or legal action taken.
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