"Damned If You Do And Damed If You Don't"

In the midst of a media pile-on, the much-maligned worker-bees at a North Carolina mental hospital are finally talking back.

A nurse and four healthcare technicians, currently on disciplinary leave for strapping a violent patient face down in order to get the labs a doctor had ordered (according to the article, the patient was not injured), charged this morning that they were being treated as scapegoats for the hospital's management problems.

It's work no one else wants to do:

" . . . they were short-handed and had not been given sufficient training to handle the patient, whom they described as hostile.

"The patient was very aggressive," said Tim Strong, a health care technician. "We did the best we can."

Let's review: The staff on the front-lines of patient care were "short-handed" and had "insufficient training". Sounds to me like the classic staffing problem at hospitals (not just the mental ones) all over this state.

But hey, we gotta keep paying out those hefty bonuses for the suits and JCAHO-types who make the rules & regulations . . . usually at home in bed when stuff like this happens.

And wait . . . look OVER THERE . . . let's throw some more money at education!

Bernice Lunsford, a Central Regional staffer who is president of the hospital's chapter of the Public Service Workers Union, also attended the news conference.

She said workers at Central Regional are put in a difficult situations when dealing with patients who resist medical care.

"We try to go by the rules and regulations the best we can," she said, but that is not always realistic with patients who are hard to control.

"You're damned if you do around here and if you don't," she said.

Yep. I know how that feels. I did and I was damned.

And my patient wasn't even fighting back.