**PLEASE NOT I ALSO PLACED THIS UNDER THE LABOR & WORKPLACE FORUM AS WELL BECAUSE I WASN'T SURE WHERE THIS WAS APPROPRIATE**

A person I know of works at a nursing home in Maine and I feel that she is breaking compliance issues. She posted on a public forum an incident which involved losing a personal item in the trash. She then stated that her and two co-workers were digging through "c-diff ridden garbage" to find this item. If I were a patient at this facility or one of my relatives was a resident at this facility I would be outraged by this. I am aware that c-diff can cause diarrhea, colitis and other bacterial infections; these people are all ready of ill health so they are more susceptible to infections. Not only that, diarrhea causes dehyrdration and that is a dangerous avenue for an elderly person to take. Even if this person washed her hands or wore gloves to examine the garbage this is bacteria and it can manifest itself no matter how clean you are. Imagine if it gets on her scrubs then she serves people their food or leans over someone in bed? We all know how easily bacterial meningitis spreads and I can guarantee c-diff spreads just as easily. With that being said, I am just curious to know if this kind of behavior is acceptable at a nursing home facility and if not what can be done about it?

I am not sure if this question can be directed to you or not but I was also wondering about personal relationships with relatives of patients at this same facility. The previously mentioned woman was also fraternizing with a relative of a patient who lives in another state. This person contacted the employee outside of work and she communicated with him on a personal level. In my experience in the healthcare field this is unacceptable behavior at ANY facility from ANY employee whether they be a janitor or physician.

I do have proof of these two incidents. Please let me know what I can do to rectify this; like I said, if my family members were residents at this facility I would be EXTREMELY upset.

Thanks in advance.

I can certainly understand this is a frustrating situation for you. I suggest you contact an attorney to determine your legal options regarding this facility. There are undoubtedly procedures in place to make formal complaints. You can find an attorney through the locator service on LawInfo’s home page at: http://www.lawinfo.com/.

You can also browse through the information in LawInfo’s Free Legal Resource Center here: http://www.lawinfo.com/index.cfm/fus...lient.consumer, or search for your particular topic here: http://resources.lawinfo.com/index.html.

See:

http://resources.lawinfo.com/Search....t+nursing+home

http://resources.lawinfo.com/Search....al+malpractice

See also:

http://www.state.me.us/ag/