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NURSING HOME PATIENTS GIVEN DRUGS WITHOUT CAUSE
Chicago Tribune - Many Illinois residents get medications they don't need or want. The result? A threat to the lives of our elderly.
One home tried to give the antipsychotic Seroquel for 16 days to a man with no psychotic symptoms. He kept saying no, but on the 17th day, a nurse gave it to him without saying what it was. The Tribune found 600-plus instances of residents given psychotropics without consent. Frail and vulnerable residents of nursing homes throughout Illinois are being dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs, leading to tremors, dangerous lethargy and a higher risk of harmful falls or even death, a Tribune investigation has found.
Thousands of elderly and disabled people have been affected, many of them drugged without their consent or without a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis that would justify treatment, state and federal inspection reports show.
Lloyd Berkley, 74, was in a nursing home near Peoria for less than a day before staff members held him down and injected him with a large amount of an antipsychotic drug, according to a state citation. A few hours later he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.
One woman was given a psychotropic drug partly because she refused to wear a bra. Nursing home staff administered an antipsychotic medication to an 87-year-old man because he was "easily annoyed."
In all, the Tribune identified 1,200 violations at Illinois nursing homes involving psychotropic medications since 2001. Those infractions affected 2,900 patients.
One home tried to give the antipsychotic Seroquel for 16 days to a man with no psychotic symptoms. He kept saying no, but on the 17th day, a nurse gave it to him without saying what it was. The Tribune found 600-plus instances of residents given psychotropics without consent. Frail and vulnerable residents of nursing homes throughout Illinois are being dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs, leading to tremors, dangerous lethargy and a higher risk of harmful falls or even death, a Tribune investigation has found.
Thousands of elderly and disabled people have been affected, many of them drugged without their consent or without a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis that would justify treatment, state and federal inspection reports show.
Lloyd Berkley, 74, was in a nursing home near Peoria for less than a day before staff members held him down and injected him with a large amount of an antipsychotic drug, according to a state citation. A few hours later he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.
One woman was given a psychotropic drug partly because she refused to wear a bra. Nursing home staff administered an antipsychotic medication to an 87-year-old man because he was "easily annoyed."
In all, the Tribune identified 1,200 violations at Illinois nursing homes involving psychotropic medications since 2001. Those infractions affected 2,900 patients.
1 Comments:
As someone who spent four years living in a nursing home (discharged this past January), I can tell you that if you aren't alert, in full possession of your mental faculties and able to advocate for yourself or have family that will do so, it is very easy to be given the wrong drugs or incorrect doses of the right drugs. So you can just imagine what must happen to those nursing home residents that are mentally challenged in any way. Although I personally have never seen anyone of my fellow inhabitants being forcibly administered drugs, some of the nurses could be very intimidating if you attempted to challenge what drugs they were giving you.
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