Special Report: Pandemic exposes systemic staffing problems at U.S. nursing homes
(Reuters) - One night in April, as coronavirus swept through the Hammonton Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, Robyn Esaw, a double amputee, signaled for help with her bedpan. She said she hit the bedside button that turns on a red hallway light. None of the few remaining staff showed up - and one of them turned the light off. Esaw only got help, eventually, by wheeling herself to the nursing station and yelling.
On another night in another room of the New Jersey home, Barbara Grimes noticed her roommate sitting in a puddle of urine, which seeped into a wound on her tailbone. No one checked on the roommate for three hours. The woman, Grimes said, had given up on calling for help.
That same month, Hammonton staffers moved David Paul and another man into a room last occupied by two residents infected with the coronavirus, one of whom later died of COVID-19. The floors were still dirty, the bathroom littered with trash, Paul said. Paul and the other man, he said, soon tested positive themselves, and his roommate died. In all, the Hammonton outbreak resulted in 238 infections and 39 deaths, state data shows.
“You cannot live here and really believe that these people care about you,” said Esaw, 70, who has lived in the home for nine years and knows Grimes and Paul well.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nursinghomes-speci/special-report-pandemic-exposes-systemic-staffing-problems-at-u-s-nursing-homes-idUSKBN23H1L9
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