Inside sources within Asante have since disclosed details surrounding the reported deaths, per NBC5 News. It is alleged that up to 10 patients died of infections contracted at the hospital.
The sources claim the infections were caused by a nurse who purportedly substituted medication with tap water.
It is alleged that the nurse was attempting to conceal the misuse of the hospital’s pain medication supply — specifically fentanyl — and intensive care unit patients were injected with tap water, causing infections that resulted in fatalities.
Medford police have confirmed their active investigation into the situation at the hospital but have refrained from providing specific details.
The sources indicate that the unsterile tap water led to pseudomonas, a dangerous infection, especially for individuals in poor health, commonly found in a hospital’s ICU.
Nursing supervisor here. Let me tell you a story just in case you might have been able to sleep tonight. I work in a long-term care facility, and most of our staff of nurses is from a staffing agency, which has the same effect as a union. Normally I’m all for unions, except many of these nurses feel incredibly entitled to work how and whenever they want. If I ask them to go fill a vacancy on a different unit that they don’t want to work on, they will just cry oppression, and threaten to leave that very minute, which they are able to do because they come from a staffing agency and not our facility. There is literally no scenario where we can just not have nurses, so we are forced to bend around backwards to let them have whatever they want, come on to shift as late as they want, etc, or we have no staff to run a facility and care for patients. At least in my area, shitty nurses are better than no nurses, and many of them choose to weaponize this fact. I’ll just reiterate that I am myself a working registered nurse, and these are the facts that I deal with everyday.
Edit: in case it wasn’t clear, I’ll fight through the gates of hell and back for my nurses, and I frequently end up on a med cart to fill those vacancies I mentioned. The nursing shortage is really bad you guys.
I know, let’s use temporary nurses that aren’t as qualified: we can pay them less and no benefits. That will increase the number of nurses
And decrease the amount of people on social security.
“I’ll fight through the gates of hell and back for my nurses”*
*Except to advocate that our cheap ass private equity owned facility hire actual full time staff with benefits instead of outsourcing to a temp agency.
Those agency nurses aren’t your enemy. They aren’t the reason you end up taking an assignment. That’s the fault of the corporation that owns you. And in all sincerity, good for those agency nurses demanding the working conditions that they want and refusing to accept whatever the facility wants to push on them.
Sincerely, a hospital nurse having our union election on Jan 10
(And I have stories too, you know. Like my supervisor who tonight simply lied to the overnight sup about our staffing situation and tried to leave two nurses alone to care for NINE patients on our critical care stepdown unit overnight.)
The nursing shortage is at least partially artificial. There is a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in abusive conditions that exploit our legal, moral, and professional obligations to our patients to make their profit. Fight these corporations for safe working conditions and watch how many nurses return to the bedside.
Yeah, honestly, imagine if a surgeon did something like that. “I don’t care if the transplant has a shelf life, I’m doing pilates and you can’t just spring a shift on me out of nowhere.” Medical Professionals need to be willing to come in at odd times and in necessary departments.
It’s not even that. They are already in the building. I am just asking them to go and work on a different unit that had two people call out 15 minutes before shift start. I literally had a nurse look at me and say “I’m too valuable to be disrespected like that. If you don’t start treating me right, I’m walking out that same door I came in.” This was after I asked her to go do the exact same job she was doing on an adjacent unit where she didn’t like one of the aids there.
No. Working in the medical field shouldn’t mean having a destroyed personal life better fucking healthxare insurance complex refuses to train and retain more workers. Tell you what, the day I get to call up the CEO of Aetna or some other heakth insurance company and tell him he has to report to duty is the day you can demand thee same from nurses.
I don’t think Health Insurance should exist as an industry, tbh. Let’s just move to single payer and spend the excess funds saved by cutting out the middlemen on paying medical professionals and teachers.
If you don’t want the lifestyle of a nurse or doctor then do not become a nurse or doctor, clearly it’s not a good fit for the lesser parts of the population. Idiots need not apply.
Your hypothetical does not accurately reflect anything about how the healthcare system works.
No transplant surgeon is getting a surprise shift. This is exactly why on-call shifts exist. There is already someone available who knows they need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
And nurses don’t function the same as doctors. We are regular wage employees, just like anyone working retail. We absolutely do not have to be available whenever and wherever. They can (and do, constantly) ask us to pick up shifts. But we’re not obligated to come in on our scheduled days off.
Healthcare corporations need to get their fucking staffing models together.
It is purely because doctors are held to a higher standard and have higher ethical responsibility the hypothetical doesn’t exist. If it weren’t that case, say if all the doctors came from a staffing agency that acts as a sort of union, then it’s totally plausible a Surgeon could pull this stunt.
You literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Doctors don’t work for wages. Their labor model is completely different from nurses.
LMFAO. Bro, it might be charitable work but it isn’t charity. Everybody goes to work with the expectation of getting paid, and if doctors stopped getting paid it wouldn’t be long before they stopped coming to work.
Doctors don’t work FOR WAGES meaning they are not hourly wage employees. Their pay structure is completely different, which means their LABOR MODEL is completely different. Of course they work for money.
This person is off their rocker.