If Terry Cawthorn and mission hospital in Asheville, n.c., and gives a glimpse of how some officials ignored a hospital across the country from the epidemic.
Cawthorn was a nurse in a mission for more than 20 years. And saw her supervisor under section as "one of my most reliable staff."
Then, as with other nurses in this month nurses NPR series of investigations, because of a back injury derailed career Cawthorn. Nursing staff suffers more debilitating back injuries and other body than almost any other business, and most of these injuries are caused by lifting and moving patients.
But in the case of Cawthorn, refused to recognize the mission hospital administrators and cause injuries in her work. In fact, court records and internal hospital documents and interviews with former hospital medical staff often suggest that hospital officials refused to acknowledge that the daily work of the employee Nurses often striking them. And the task is not unique. NPR found similar positions toward nurses in hospitals across the country.
Documents from the court case Cawthorn tells her story.
It was in the afternoon on her birthday 45. The patient was great just had a caesarean, Cawthorn was helping her carriage of stretcher on her bed-a task nursing staff perform thousands of times every day.
"She had a kind of cheek on one bed, one cheek on a stretcher, and we [are] trying to help her," says Cawthorn. To demonstrate, Cawthorn bends her knees and perched, keeping her back straight. She stretches her arms like a fence, as if she were holding out for the patient to grip.
"And the second to hold, almost immediately felt hot tar was just going down my spine, in my country," says Cawthorn.
And by the time I left work that day, she could not walk or drive. Her husband had to lift her out of her car and carry it home and put her on the floor. Cawthorn can see in Christmas flowers pink cake and her family made at the dining table. "I'm just on the ground, crying," says Cawthorn, "in a lot of pain."
Cawthorn took painkillers, and made it back to work the next morning, and wounding her supervisor. Then she hurt her back again in less than a week later when she lifted another patient. She injured her back a third time after a few days. After nine months, same Cawthorn became a patient at the Hospital where she worked: she had a "fusion between lumbar objects," operation where the surgeon based metal cage on her spine.
State laws require companies to cover medical bills for employees when they are infected. Companies also have to pay compensation to injured employees support while they are missing-missing paychecks.
But officials refuse to help mission Cawthorn. According to court documents, concluded the medical staff in the hospital she was sick. But the hospital's lawyers disagree, arguing that Cawthorn actually hurt her back part, while lifting a casserole dinner from her oven.
Mission Hospital officials said also that as a result of the back injury Cawthorn because they no longer work. Cawthorn and her husband says she was lying in a hospital bed two days after surgery, hospital Representative walked into her room and handed her a document. She announced that the mission and finish work.
"They really saved themselves the mail," says Cawthorn, looking as if she's about to cry. "I even destroyed emotionally. Nursing is not just a job. It's who you are. "
Cawthorn as her husband, Tucker, talk about her painful story, they're sitting at home in a small town a 30-minute drive from Asheville. The refrigerator is covered with pictures of their families, which show significantly different Cawthorn woman sitting now on the dining table.
Enlarge this picture
Be displayed on the fridge-images of Cawthorn. prior to being injured.
Susanna Kay for NPR
The woman in the photos taken by six to seven years, just before he was shot, is a healthy appearance. But on this day, she has weapons like sticks, black spots under her eyes. She and her husband and says she lost 40 pounds after being hurt-and was only recently able to recover seven of them. Cawthorn says for the first three years after the accident, was just thinking about how that changed her life and how painful mission officials replied that she could not talk about it.
"I would just cry," says Cawthorn. "I was crying and crying and crying."
There is no evidence that mission staff wounded more than employees in other hospitals. The investigation also reveals NPR infected nurses, hospitals generally are not required to make public injury statistics, so it's hard to compare. NPR also found that officials at most hospitals across the country failed to do much about the epidemic of back injuries and the other affecting the nursing staff.
The researchers say in the healthcare industry there are a few key reasons.
One reason is money.
"It was a tough two decades for the hospital industry," says Daniel McChesney, founder of DeciBio, healthcare industry research company.
Nursing staff were very likely to move and lift patients for as long as there were nurses and patients. But studies by Government and University researchers, the United States in the 1990s began to show that hospitals can prevent many of those injuries, if hospital managers invest enough time And money. They have to buy special equipment to transfer patients, such as powered roof jacks, they have to conduct intensive training for employees.
0 التعليقات: