I had my purse stolen two weeks ago, which included my driver's license, debit cards, credit cards, and professional licenses. This occurred the day before I was flying to Washington, D.C. for a Center for American Nurses Meeting. I was hysterical.
So you can imagine the feeling of these nursing home residents who had their identity stolen by nursing home employees. The thieves applied for credit cards and purchased hundreds of thousand of dollars in merchandise.
The article did not indicate if any of the employees were nurses. See http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080430/NEWS01/804300343.
The nursing home is of course embarrased and saying one employee used a fake identity to obtain employment. Hmm? What about fingerprinting and obtaining a national background check? Fingerprints don't lie. Most nursing homes have high turnover with direct care staff and I can imagine a scenario where a nursing home cuts a few corners to bring a "body" on board for staffing purposes.
What has been your experience with practicing in a nursing home? What's the good, the bad, and the ugly about practicing as a nurse in a nursing home?
I must be honest; yes, attorneys can be honest. I worked in a nursing for almost a year after I graduated from my ASN program and was working on my BSN. I did not enjoy it although I worked only two shifts a week. It could have been that I was a new nurse and I really wanted to work in a hospital and saw the nursing home as just a "job" until something else opened up. This was in 1993 and Hospitals here in Cincinnati were not hiring new grad nurses at the time.
This is a cut and paste of part of the article below:
Kathy McCameron, executive director of Atria Highland Crossing, said Bounds' background check showed no criminal history.
That was because Bounds wasn't the name she gave the nursing home when she applied. She used another identity that had no criminal history, McCameron said.
Bounds worked just one shift at Atria before McCameron told her to leave "because of some other incidents" that McCameron refused to specify.
The identity thefts started coming to light last summer when nursing home residents received bills for credit cards that they didn't know they had.
Those credit cards paid for pricey electronics as well as bills for cell phones and cable television.
The U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspectors and police departments began investigating.
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