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What life-limiting illness caused him to be admitted for Hospice care?
If there was no life-limiting illness that was documented, you should report this to the DA, to the Ombudsmen and to CMS.
Since you keep posting, I'm sure that you're expressing your concern by taking real action, not just posting here, but contacting law enforcement, legislators, and other people who have the authority to introduce legislation or initiate investigations.
As I would think anyone could surmise, posting on a forum is not going to initiate any change. We don't have the authority, and most of us are too busy taking care of our parents or other loved ones in the family to take up someone else's cause.
So, please share with us the results of your legal contacts, or grass roots lobbying groups you've started. I'm also especially interested in which legislators specifically have expressed concern and will be introducing legislation to address the issues.
Oh, and how is your med mal suit for wrongful death proceeding? (I'm assuming you've filed one?)
Yes. If the patient is willing to put up with the pain, they should not be forced to take the opiates or any other pain meds.
Some people can tolerate a high level of pain and do not want to be medicated into oblivion.
Many patients are medically savvy and know what these drugs can do to breathing and to kidney and liver function.
On opiates patients often lose interest in eating and do not think to hydrate themselves properly.
No patient should ever be given pain meds, when they do not want them.
Please report this promptly to you state elder abuse organization.
These opiates are being overused. They are also being used as a form of chemical restraint.
For those who are claiming that the meds are merciful. Here is something to think about:
A neighbors son died of a Fetanyl over dose. They found him on the floor with clumps of his own hair in his hand, pulled out by the roots.
The doctor explained to the boys mother that Fetanyl can shut down respiration and that is very frightening and can cause panic. He likely pulled out his hair in a panic.
Yet, when an elderly hospice patient is given a deadly hospital cocktail for pain and it hastens death, the family is told they died peacefully. Hmmmmmm!
Would you like to say a little more about the situation?
I am trying to wrap my head around what alleged behavior you’ve assigned that nurse.
Nursing & Drug Administration is very important to every nurse out there. To entertain the thought that a nurse was circumventing physician orders and decided to (arbitrarily) administer more of the Hospice cocktail to your GM sounds like you are implying the nurse was simply giving bolus doses of the meds.
That nurse wouldn’t know your GM was feisty or so 3 months ago & can only see an elderly woman that has reached her end of life. A good nurse must/will assess the patient’s pain, etc, evaluate what’s already been given & any acquired relief from the meds first before administering any more. The decision to administrate the Hospice cocktail medication formula is not determined until the nurse performs an accurate assessment & data review - like intake, BP, output & uses nursing judgement for managing a Hospice.
Again my condolences to you & your family.
The final day was just like the others--we raced to the hospital, kind of expecting the same outcome---and his dr asked if we would allow him to give him some morphine as he was choking to death and in terrible pain. OF course the kids said yes to that--within 20 minutes he passed.
Did that dr kill him? Absolutely not. Just gave him a peaceful passing.
The notes ought to have been properly completed. Yes, they should. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've ever said that...
There will almost certainly be other records (stock, supplies, a room inventory, something) you can use to verify what she was given, if it's still troubling you. But I'll bet you anything the nurse was just in too much of a hurry.
Nurses and care aides do, sadly, lose it from time to time. They may shout, they may be rude, they may leave the room abruptly, they may even slap or roughly handle patients; and although it is never okay once you've been through the trenches you're not so quick to judge.
But I can't imagine a nurse will think "right, you..." and actually overdose a patient just to avoid tending her. The kind of very disturbed people who might do that poison their patients with insulin and get caught pretty promptly.
Nurses are Angels. I praise them for their very tough job. But sometimes I think some maybe in the geriatric section might loose their composure and help things along to possibly relieve their stressful situation hence a bigger cocktail than necessary.
There are other posters here with the nursing and medical qualifications to give you the exact figures; but even as a lay person I know that to drop somebody's respiration by THAT much you would have to give them gigantic amounts of morphine. Massive. And it's a controlled substance, you couldn't just say oops I miscounted.
I'm so sorry for your loss, and for your grandmother's passing, but the sad reality is that by the sound of it her heart gave out. Her pulse slowed and became erratic, her circulation petered out (hence the low O2 sats), and she passed quickly and peacefully away.
And can I say how personally fond I am of bellicose, assertive, cranky elderly ladies who poke people with a stick if they don't jump high enough? Your grandmother was a character in her ALF for five years. I expect they miss her *terribly.*
Did the staff over medicate her to keep her quiet or possibly give a little extra to help her over the edge? But was disappointed when family came in and thwarted there plan?
She literally came back to life after she ate and drank. When your that medicated you can eat or drink so what happened?
Fast forward to yesterday, she is back to her old self, cranky, eating, drinking, wanting to go out of her room, get her hair done, visit with people, talk on the phone, get up and go to the restroom, talking about the good old days, you get the picture right, well apparently she got int it with a nurse and was screaming and carrying on about noontime and they gave her two meds. Antivan and Morphine. Now at this time she had a pretty deep cough and was on O2 to help her breathe.
Within an hour of administrating this combo of meds, her O2 sats dropped to the 50’s so they placed her on a higher dose of O2 and called us.
We got there around 3:30 maybe and they had called a hospice nurse to check her and they basically said she was actively dying. She did die at 4:23. We saw it happen.
We were told that the nurse who gave the meds was not there and she did not leave any nursing notes as to what happened. I was surprised as was the hospice nurse about that. My question is, is it just possible that the nurse had had enough of her screaming at her and possibly gave her maybe too much, concidering her bad cough and already compromised breathing?
She was alert, had eaten breakfast, gotten up to use the restroom, maybe got mad at something, demanded her pain meds and the nurse maybe gave her too much?
You didn't respond to my other comment.
Please, tell me how long it takes morphine to metabolize in the body?
You are obviously confused.
I have never diagnosed anyone. That's a doctor's job. As others have done, I have speculated on physical problems but I have never given a diagnosis.
I have never prescribed medication for anyone. Again, that takes a doctor order to do that. Along with others, I have given an opinion on certain medications and how they have worked for me, my mother or my patients. That is NOT prescribing, nor is it giving advise. It is my opinion only. I do not charge for any opinion, therefore I am not practicing medicine without a license.
I HAVE medically treated hundreds of patients over 39 years, WITH a doctor's order. By law, I am allowed to do that. That's why we have licenses, so we can implement the doctor's orders.
IF you had bothered to read my posts, I have described my experiences and actions.
No one IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would suggest that I did otherwise.
I'm actually sorry for you. You are not happy unless you're stirring up p**p.
Make all the accusations you want. Your credibility is non-existent.
Go troll someplace else. I'm tired of your ridiculous rants here.
Prolife is a TROLL who has infested many threads on this forum in order to manipulate people's emotions for the purpose of (in his/her mind) furthering his/her personal political agenda.
If Prolife were truly interested in doing something about this issue, he/she would be busy lobbying legislators and other decision-makers, and wouldn't have the time to post repetitively in a single forum.
Prolife is a big faker who goes around making up new accounts (sockpuppets) on AgingCare.com just to troll us all with more obviously fake "testimonies."
Prolife is clearly only interested in provoking reactions and disrupting conversations, and is probably enjoying him/herself very much.
Prolife is obviously a very sad and lonely person with nothing better to do than troll caregivers online.
I urge everyone to remember this when you decide whether or not to engage.
********************
Please feel free to copy and paste this message wherever/whenever you see Prolife posting, so as to warn others who may get sucked in by his/her trolling.
Say you are giving your patient 100 mg of morphine... you mentioned you can give every hour if needed..
If the medication lasts say 4 hours and you are giving 100mg per hour... that's 400mg in the patient's body at one time!!
Now, what if someone follows that advice, and harm is caused? She is liable for that harm. That is why there are laws against it.
A nurse can not prescribe medication or the medication dosages.
I have seen her and others make many other statements that would fall under making a diagnosis, prescribing treatment, as well as making "professional" recommendations, for specific conditions, based on the fact that they are a nurse.
As a nurse, you are not licensed to give medical advice.
Only a doctor is licensed to give medical advice.
Diagnosing, prescribing treatments and giving recommendations for specific conditions all constitutes giving medical advice.
If Prolife were truly interested in doing something about this issue, he/she would be busy lobbying legislators and other decision-makers, and wouldn't have the time to post repetitively in a single forum. Prolife is clearly only interested in provoking reactions and disrupting conversations, and is probably enjoying him/herself very much.
In my real life, I've known a couple of "pro-life" (in this case, anti-abortion) people who've gotten kicked out of their local activist group for being problematic and disruptive, so they've taken their energy online to troll people where there are fewer consequences for their actions.
As discussed in another hospice thread.....I'm sorry some of the threads are making people's hearts heavy, but it's quite clear things were going fine until Prolife came along to disrupt supportive conversations and drag all of these hospice threads under. If the moderators would ban Prolife's IP address (this site IS supposed to be non-political), these threads would probably return to some kind of normalcy.
Personally, I'm not one bit sorry for mocking Prolife, because he/she is a big faker who goes around making up new accounts (sockpuppets) on AgingCare.com just to troll us all with more obviously fake "testimonies."
Emotional manipulators are among the worst kind of people, and he/she ought to know some of us see right through him/her.
And also contact the National Institute of Health and let them know that their information is incorrect according to your findings.
Otherwise, nothing is going to be solved by posting your material on the forums.
Let's tear this apart.
"Nurses gave high doses of drugs such as Morphine".,.. Yes, hospice nurses (and hospital nurses) give high doses (10-15-20 mg.) to relieve pain. If you or I took that amount, we'd sleep for hours. That's a GOOD thing when you have intractable pain when dying, right?
...."regardless of whether patients needed it or not"...Now WHO assessed whether they needed it? Nurses with a state license? Or the Prosecutors? Were they medically trained to spot signs of pain? Do they make up the rules as they go along? "Oh, this one is screaming, so give her some Morphine but this one is only moaning and frowning, so he doesn't get any Morphine."
This is ludicrous.
....."To justify the higher payments, prosecutors said"......
Prosecutors obviously don't understand that Medicare is billed for each day hospice has a patient on service and pays a set rate. It is NOT billed by how much medicine the nurse gives.
As with the rest, this sentence doesn't make sense.
Any registered pharmacy (NOT HOSPICE) dispenses a standard amount of Morphine for the patient. The hospice doesn't get a kick back or get paid for the medications.
..."In some instances, these excessive doseage a have resulted in 'serious bodily injury' or 'death'."
These are people dying in pain or anxiety. What 'serious bodily injury' will present itself by getting a large dose of Morphine? It's not rat poison. It doesn't make your skin fall off. Death is to be expected if a person is on hospice. A doctor had to recommend them and state that they believe they have less than 6 months to live.
If hospice is trying to get rich, wouldn't you think they'd be trying everything they could to keep their patients ALIVE?
You can't bill Medicare for a dead patient.
Where does this cr*p come from?
This is the indictment; what he was charged with. It does not prove him guilty. This is not the verdict. Your arguments would carry more weight if they were based in fact.