A nursing home employee watched three straight episodes of “Dog The
Bounty Hunter” and “shrugged off ” an alarm that indicated an
89-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease had wandered outside into
near-zero conditions early one morning, prosecutors said.
The woman’s lifeless, frozen body later was found in
the facility’s courtyard after she had been outside for as many as five
hours, prosecutors said, and now the employee, a nursing assistant, has
been charged in connection with her death.
The aide, 23, was charged Tuesday with criminal neglect of a long-term-care facility
resident, criminal neglect of an elderly person and obstruction of
justice. If convicted, she faces up to 7 years in prison.
“She
was expected to do her job. She was expected to make bed checks every
two hours, and she didn’t,” the prosecutor said.
“The death of [the resident] was not an accident, but a
pattern of neglect,” the prosecutor said. “She was known by staff to be a
wanderer and wore an ankle bracelet that reminded the staff.”
He said nursing home protocol called for checks every two hours, and the aide is accused of lying about a 3 a.m. check she claimed she made on
the resident.
Although an alarm sounded at a secure door during
the middle of the night when the resident left the building, no nursing
home employee checked on her, the prosecutor said, adding the outside
temperature that morning was about 1 degree.
“[The aide] shrugged off the alarm and went back to watching TV,” he said. For more about this tragic, yet preventable incident, please read the story.
The freezing death of this resident is shocking, especially since it was completely preventable. The nursing home had a warning alarm system in place, and it worked, but for the aide’s criminal decision to ignore it.
A nursing home or assisted living facility is required to provide
residents with a “safe and secure environment” using “adequate
supervision and assistance devices to prevent accidents,” including
injuries and death caused by unsafe wandering and elopement. A mobile,
dependent, cognitively impaired patient should never be permitted to
wander or elope undetected and unsupervised. A nursing home or assisted
living facility must recognize the risk of wandering or eloping and
take immediate steps to ensure the patient’s safety. Staff should be
educated and warned about the patient’s risk of wandering or eloping.
The nursing home or assisted living facility should also use electronic
alarms that will notify staff immediately when the patient leaves the
facility or a safe area in or around the facility.
___________________________________________________________
Robert W. Carter, Jr. is a Virginia attorney whose law practice is
dedicated to protecting the rights of the victims of nursing
home and assisted living neglect and abuse in Richmond, Roanoke,
Norfolk, Lynchburg, Danville, Charlottesville, and across Virginia.
