Life Care fired staffer who revealed nursing home nightmare to Reuters

(Reuters) - A nursing home owned by Life Care Centers of America Inc has fired one nurse and banned another from the premises after the two were quoted in a Reuters investigation detailing horrific conditions, a staff exodus and a botched management response to the facility’s deadly COVID-19 outbreak.

Life Care terminated one of the nurses, Colleen Lelievre, last week after managers at the Littleton, Massachusetts, home accused her of making clerical errors involving narcotics for residents. She said she had not been told of any issues until June 12, two days after publication of the Reuters report. Another nurse, Lisa Harmon, said a manager barred her from the building the same day, without explaining why.

“I don’t know how they think that they’re just blatantly doing this and getting away with it,” said Harmon, a supervisor.

The Reuters report included interviews with Lelievre and Harmon describing an overwhelmed and overworked staff. In one instance, so many workers had quit or called in sick that managers assigned a teenage nursing-assistant trainee to a shift caring for nearly 30 dementia patients, Harmon and a former worker said. Eighty- to ninety-hour weeks became the norm, the two nurses said. In a dementia unit, workers were unable to keep residents from wandering into hallways and other patients’ rooms, potentially spreading infection.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/life-care-fired-staffer-who-revealed-nursing-home-nightmare-to-reuters/ar-BB15PgGq?li=BBnb7Kz