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A September 10, article in Newsday, by criminal justice reporter, Bridget Murphy ([email protected]; Twitter: @ByBridgetMurphy ), entitled,“Trial opens in case of health care workers charged in patient death”, describes that, “Sijimole Reji, Annieamma Augustine and Martine Morland are all former county employees who are on trial in the nursing home death of an elderly person whose ventilator alarm they are accused of ignoring for several minutes.”
The article continues to describe, “the trial of two registered nurses and a certified nurse aide,” in Nassau County Court, “charged with felonies in the December 2015 death of an 81-year-old resident of publicly financed A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility.” According to Murphy, “Authorities have alleged the wheelchair-bound patient became disconnected from the ventilator she needed to breathe, triggering visible and audible alarms that notified nursing staff the woman’s life was in jeopardy.” Reported in the article, Special Assistant Attorney General Peter Zadek stated in court that, “the three health care workers were ‘engaged in casual conversation’ at a nursing station less than 40 feet away as victim Carmela Contrera was suffocating.” He continued, “the defendants’ negligence caused the woman’s death a day later at Nassau University Medical Center,” and that they, “were less than 20 minutes away from the end of their overnight shifts when the alarms went off.”
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Category: Latest Articles, Long Term Care Community Coalition, Nursing Home Residents, Nursing Home Safety Standards, Patients Rights, Quality of Care, Staffing, U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Understaffing
