CA Woman, 87, Dies After Nurse Refuses to Do CPR
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ca-woman-87-dies-nurse-refuses-cpr-18645317
From the article:
A central California retirement home is defending one of its nurses who refused pleas by a 911 operator to perform CPR on an elderly woman, who later died.
The executive director of Glenwood Gardens, Jeffrey Toomer, defended the nurse’s actions in a statement, saying she did indeed follow policy.
Can you imagine that corporate policy can come down to decides who lives and dies?
Can you imagine a healthcare professionals standing by and watching someone die… because of a corporate policy & procedures ?
Filed under: General Problems
That’s just sick.
Here is a clear case of corporate policy that was designed to prevent the company from being sued if one of their employees tried to ‘help’ a sick resident and the resident died. As long as the nurse did nothing for the dying woman, then the company could not be sued by relatives that could claim the nurse was the cause of her death. Since the woman signed an agreement when she entered the facility that she would have to wait for 911 to respond, I doubt the family can sue the retirement home.
This is another clear case of where reason and policy are on diametrically opposite sides. The reasonable thing to do would have been for the nurse to have tried to save the woman’s life. Our society is chock full of laws, regulations and policies that on many occasions go against common sense and reason. The nurse was put in a position of saving the woman and losing her job, or of letting the woman die and her saving her job. How will that nurse live with herself? If she should lose her job at that facility, who would hire her? How many new residents will this retirement home get now? You just watch…they will change that policy. Then, how will that nurse feel? But, had the nurse saved the woman’s life, she would have been fired for not following procedure. But, when the facility changes their policy allows CPR, how will that nurse feel? It is a ‘Catch 22’ for the nurse.
Since we work in one of the highest regulated industries, it is easy for us to relate to this story. We are often placed in a position where corporate policy goes against what might be the most reasonable and common sense approach to a problem. The story of the nurse and the dying woman should give us all something to think about. Just how far will we follow corporate policy if it goes against our ‘ethics’ and sense of reason? At what point will we risk our job to do the ‘right’ thing? These are not far our philosophical questions, but lie at the heart of everything we do. We should be prepared as to how we will react when faced with bad policies that go against our sense of ‘ethics’. I suppose, in one sense, that ‘ethics’ has been replaced in these corporations by ‘policies’. This is why a corporation is not a person and does not ‘think’ as a person. A corporation is ‘non-human’. The things that flow from the corporation are not ‘human’ in nature. There is no ethics…no reason…no common sense. This retirement home is a prime example of this.
I live in California. I am not surprised.