“If a 747 jetliner crashed every day, killing all 500 people aboard, there would be a national uproar over aviation safety and an all-out mobilization to fix the problem.” However, “in the nation’s hospitals…about the same number of people die on average every day from medical ‘adverse events,’ many of them preventable errors, such as
The Chicago Sun-Times reported the guilty plea of the infamous “Angel of Death” Marty Himebaugh who was a nurse charged with overmedicating residents at Woodstock Residence nursing home where six patients died suspiciously. As part of the guilt yplea she admitted she gave one patient a drug he had never been prescribed. “Marty Himebaugh — whom McHenry County prosecutors said
The Star Tribune had a good article abiout the problem of over-medication of nursing home residents. Powerful antipsychotic drugs have been used for years to reduce agitation, hallucinations and other debilitating symptoms among people with mental illnesses. They also are widely used “off label” to quell disruptive behavior among people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms
Journal of Clinical Nursing has an article about a recent study linking the use of sleeping pills containing benzodiazepines to increase falls in nursing homes. Older patients taking benzodiazepines were 2.9 times more likely to fall Obviously, patients who fall suffer severe injuries. Some older patients have impaired cognitive function or limited functional ability and physical
The Chicago Tribune has a story about the suspicious deaths possibly caused by morphine overdose at a nursing home. McHenry County prosecutors acknowledge the suspicious deaths at the Woodstock Residence nursing home in Woodstock have been difficult to pursue. Three bodies were exhumed last year, and tissue samples were sent to a Pennsylvania lab for
The New York Times has an interesting and scary article about how the elderly are given dangerous and unnecessary medications. The article relays a story about a 78-year-old woman who was found unconscious on the floor of her apartment by a neighbor. Her medical history included high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure