• VA staff left veteran's body in shower nine hours, tried to hide mistakes
    11 replies, posted
[quote] Staff members at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System left the body of a veteran in a shower room for more than nine hours then tried to cover up the mistake, a hospital investigation shows. A report of the investigation's findings provides no information about the veteran, who died in February at the hospice unit of the Bay Pines center, 10000 Bay Pines Blvd. Some hospice staff violated hospital and Veterans Affairs policies by "failing to provide appropriate post-mortem care," including proper transportation of a body to the morgue, according to the report by the hospital's Administrative Investigation Board. Bay Pines ordered retraining and a change in procedures as a result of the incident, and "appropriate personnel action was taken," said hospital spokesman Jason Dangel. "We view this finding as unacceptable," Dangel said. He declined to elaborate on whether workers were fired or disciplined, citing employee confidentiality rules. Leaving the body unattended for so long subjected it to an "increased risk of decomposition," according to the hospital report. Here's how the report describes the incident: Once the veteran died, hospice staff members made direct verbal requests to an individual described as the transporter for the body to be moved to the morgue. The transporter told them to follow proper procedures instead by contacting dispatchers. That request was never made, so those responsible for taking away the body never showed up. At first, the body was moved to a hallway in the hospice, then to a shower room, where it stayed, unattended, for more than nine hours. Some hospice staff "demonstrated a lack of concern, attention and respect" for the veteran, the report says. Once the problem was discovered, efforts to understand how it happened were stalled by failures in oversight and by reports that "falsely documented" the incident, the report says. Staff misrepresented why the problem occurred, attributing it to a communications breakdown that never happened, according to the report. In addition, investigators found: • Hospice staff failed to check a 24-hour nursing report that would signal whether the death was properly reported and failed to ask personnel involved about the handoff. • Questioned later by investigators, some responsible for oversight at the hospice blamed a shortage of clerical staff — a claim they later recanted. • Staff failed to update a nursing service organizational chart, hampering efforts to determine who was in charge. • The hospice unit lacks a structured plan for educating personnel on best practices.[/quote] [url]http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/report-va-staff-left-veterans-body-in-shower-for-nine-hours-tried-to-hide/2305694[/url]
Sounds like a regular sitcom scenario
Florida AND the VA. Very hard to keep an objective perspective on the level of fail exhibited.
they don't give a shit about vets in life. they probably care even less in death.
Fuck the VA.
Why not just report the mistake and respect the damn man in his death? What is wrong with people that we don't have the ability to own up to when we make a mistake and instead we make mistakes on top of those mistakes to hide the original mistake?
[QUOTE=BlackMageMari;51517525]Why not just report the mistake and respect the damn man in his death? What is wrong with people that we don't have the ability to own up to when we make a mistake and instead we make mistakes on top of those mistakes to hide the original mistake?[/QUOTE] Because people lack forethought for important decisions and generally have little awareness of concepts for things such as consequence for your actions.
[QUOTE=milktree;51516471]they don't give a shit about vets in life. they probably care even less in death.[/QUOTE] na it just seems like the VA hospitals are terribly organized, under staffed and poorly trained which is nothing new really.
Who ever does this shit needs a good ass whipping to get their neglectant shit straight.
Sickening. These soldiers go to the VA because they expect to get the medical care they deserve. Instead they get treated horrible and shit like this happens. I'm ashamed of how the VA treats our veterans.
Imagine for a moment all the reasons this man might have gone to war for. Protecting the family he loved, honoring veteran ancestors, a sense of duty, something else. Imagine what he might have seen, imagine all the stories he could tell and how much someone could learn from him. Imagine a book about his life. Whoever he was, he didn't deserve this.
I'd venture far enough to say that nobody deserves this kind of neglect, be it in life or in death, but this is no truer than for those that sacrificed their time to protect our country. This is a gross display of negligence, and i can only hope the offending parties are held accountable and punished suitably. Having first-hand experience with how our legal system handles cases involving elder abuse, though, I don't have high hopes....
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