Kentucky investigators urge nursing homes to ban cell phones
May 28th, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Members of the staff at Bluegrass Care and Rehabilitation Center in Lexington, Kentucky, didn’t think their joke would get out of hand. They would attach sexually explicit song lyrics to photos of residents taken with their cell phone cameras and send them as text messages to other employees. “We were just having fun,” an employee told state investigators. “Everybody was on the cell phone 24/7.”
The Inspector General’s Office of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services didn’t see the humor in the incidents and has requested Kentucky facilities to prevent the same such use of cell phones among staff.
Some residents were photographed only partially dressed or in compromising situations, such as walking into the bathroom. Others’ voices were recorded as they screamed or made other comments.
In once incident, a woman with Alzheimer’s disease was recorded saying, “I gotta do-do,” to indicate she needed to use the bathroom. The employee who recorded her reportedly played it back to at least 15 people standing at the nurse’s station. At least one staff member said the use of cell phones during the weekend night shift was “out of control.”
Reports of inappropriate cell phone use have sprung up in recent months. Last March, an Oklahoma nursing home employee was arrested after using his phone to videotape his abuse of residents. Last month in Tennessee, two nursing home workers were fired for using their cell phones inappropriately in the home.
A representative with Bluegrass said that all employees involved in the incident at the Kentucky home have been fired and that all 10,000 employees with Signature Healthcare, the company that owns Bluegrass, have been re-educated on the company’s cell phone policy. Those who use cell phones in a resident area are subject to immediate termination.
Source: Kentucky.com