Are Nursing Home Patients Being Used as Test Subjects?
Generally, I write humor, but not this time.
Working in a nursing home is an extraordinarily difficult job. Due, in large part to mental health issues, my mother has been in and out of nursing homes for large portions of her life over the last almost forty years. On occasion she has went off her antipsychotic drugs because she thought she was doing well without them and didn’t like the side effects.
The results were consistently disastrous. But recently something occurred that I found particularly distressing.
An unwanted intervention
My mother had been doing fairly well in the nursing home in which she resides. Then one day a nurse told me the state was cutting her antipsychotic meds in half. Having seen this my mother lower her own meds for close to forty years I told the nurse it wouldn’t end well.
Fast forward about two months. (I will have to verify the time frame) My mother was sent to a facility in McAlester Oklahoma to have her paranoia and related aggressive behavior treated.
She was released after about 10 days and returned to the nursing home where she is a resident. The facility in McAlester reintroduced her to the antipsychotic, Haldol. The facility in McAlester prescribed it, but left to the…
