What Were These Nursing Homes Thinking?
There are many daily occurrences that occur in nursing homes that beg the question: what in the world were they thinking? Everyday we hear about tragic incidents that are preventable not only with proper medical training, but plain old common sense. 
Some recent stories make me question the intelligence and sincerity of the people who work in nursing homes. I mean everyone knows that: people need water, if you leave people laying in bed for days they will develop bedsores, sexual predators probably shouldn't be living amongst around the elderly, a bed-bound person will have a difficult time running out during a fire and nursing home residents require ongoing care.
Lara Pettiss Harrill of the South Carolina Nursing Home Blog, drives home nursing home residents' needs for basic care in her recent post on a Belleville, Illinois nursing home resident who filed a lawsuit after he contracted gangrene on his penis. Ms. Harrill sums up the nursing home care issues faced by residents who suffer from nursing home neglect on a daily basis;
'Bottom line is, this gentleman was in a nursing facility, presumably because he needed nursing care - presumably because he needed assistance with activities of daily living, like bathing, dressing and using the bathroom. What on earth were the employees doing (or not doing) that they could miss something like gangrene . . .'
The above situation further demonstrates a culture of neglect that has developed in many nursing homes where employees willingly ignore critical health problems and hope the worker on the next shift does the routine work they should have done. Gangrene does not develop overnight. Dare I say to the entire staff at the Calvin Johnson Care Center, 'what were you thinking?'
