Report: Weak oversight lets dangerous nurses work in New York

[davidn3600]

Thomas Maino knew he was going to die. Suffering from serious ailments, the 93-year-old veteran had rejected invasive treatments and asked only that he be made comfortable after he was admitted to a Syracuse nursing home in November 2008.

But on a snowy Saturday morning the following January, his moans could be heard down the hallway.

Over the next eight hours, coworkers reported to the nurse in charge of Maino’s unit that he needed pain medication. That nurse, Maura Quinn, gave him only Tylenol and never alerted the doctor. Other nurses told her Maino was in agony, but she ignored them, even when his moaning turned to yelling, seven staffers at the home later testified in depositions taken during an investigation by the state Attorney General’s office.

“Oh great, now people are going to tell me how to do my freaking job,” Quinn said when a nurse from a nearby wing left a note for her about Maino, according to one deposition.

Maino died that evening.

After an administrator reported the incident to New York nursing home regulators, Quinn was fired and, in December 2010, convicted of a misdemeanor for providing Maino with inadequate care. The state Attorney General’s office reported Quinn to the Office of the Professions, the agency that licenses and disciplines nurses, when she was sentenced two months later.

But it would take another three years for the Office of the Professions to suspend her from nursing. By then, the agency had learned that Quinn lied on her initial licensing application, failing to disclose a 1988 conviction for drug possession, and that she was convicted in 2012 of driving without a license — both grounds for more disciplinary action. The agency finally suspended Quinn’s nursing license for three months in May 2014.
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Unlike many states, New York does not require applicants for nursing licenses to undergo simple background checks or submit fingerprints, tools that can identify those with criminal histories and flag subsequent legal problems. And it often takes years for New York to discipline nurses who provide inept care, steal drugs or physically abuse patients.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/weak-oversight-lets-dangerous-nurses-work-in-new-york/

[tblue37]

1. I bet she withheld the more effective pain meds either for her own use or to sell. nt