Cops: No charges after home's refusal to give CPR
Shown is the main gate of Glenwood Gardens in Bakersfield, Calif., Monday March 4, 2013, where an elderly woman died after a nurse refused to perform CPR on her last week. / AP Photo/Gosia Wozniacka
Updated at 7:16 a.m. ET March 7
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. Police said Wednesday that no criminal charges will be filed after a care worker's attention-grabbing refusal to perform CPR on a resident of a Central California independent-living facility.
The Bakersfield Police Department said it has closed its investigation into the death of Lorainne Bayless, 87, who died Feb. 26 at Glenwood Gardens while a nurse there refused a 911 dispatcher's pleas to administer CPR.
The public release of the 7-minute recording caused national outrage, fueled further when the facility's owner claimed the nurse acted appropriately.
On Tuesday, Tennessee-based Brookdale Senior Living Inc. reversed itself and said the unidentified employee had misinterpreted the company's guidelines and was on voluntary leave while the case is investigated.
- Family: CA woman denied CPR wanted no intervention
- 911 call reveals nurse refused to give dying woman CPR
Nonetheless, Bayless' family said it was her desire to forgo resuscitation efforts and that she died of natural causes, which her family said was her "greatest wish." The family said it has no intentions of suing the company or seeking punishment for its workers.
"They wish no hardship on those who were witnesses," said Sonja Eddings Brown, a spokeswoman for the family. "It is natural for there to be an appropriate investigation, and if Lorraine's death helps other families to learn from it or prepare for the future, then not only was her life a great blessing, but in some small way her passing too."
Bayless collapsed in the Glenwood Gardens dining hall. Someone called 911 on a cellphone and asked for an ambulance. Later, a woman who identified herself as a nurse got on the line and told dispatcher Tracey Halvorson she was not permitted to do CPR on the woman.
Halvorson implored the nurse to find someone else and said she would instruct them on how to perform CPR.
"I understand if your facility is not willing to do that," Halvorson said. "Give the phone to a passer-by. This woman is not breathing enough. She is going to die if we don't get this started, do you understand?"
By the time paramedics arrived, Bayless had stopped breathing.
Bakersfield fire officials who responded said Bayless did not have a "do not resuscitate" order on file at the home.
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Retirement homes have RN on staff to supervise prescription medications. They are *not* a medical facility like a nursing home.
The woman's daughter - who is a nurse - had no problem with the action/inaction of the staff. Presumably the daughter knows far more about the situation than those of us looking in from the outside and limited media reports.
As the daughter of an elderly parent in an assisted living facility, I have no problem with their decision and hope they do as much for my parent when the time comes. This is something we as a family have talked about. We do not have a DNR on file. It is left to my judgement to look at the totality of the circumstances and make the decision that my parent would make if they were able. There are some decisions I have had to make on behalf of my parent that are not what I thought best, but I did what I knew my parent would have wanted.
The family says the staff did what the woman would have wanted, could she have spoken for herself.
And the question begs, if the policy of the company is to not offer medical assistance to residents of this facility, why on earth are they paying for an RN to be on staff?
And to call the operator a "drama queen" for trying to find someone to help this person is, well pretty insane of you. Let's hope one of these "drama queens" has the same compassion and dedication if you are in dire straits and need assistance or a loved one of yours has to call 911 or you house is on fire and that "someone off the street" is the only one with a cell phone to call 911 for the fire department.
Harry, you need to take another look at the value of a human life and what part you yourself might have to play and not come up with inane comments.
Corporations were already well known as placed where Constitutional rights meant nothing, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure being violated in corporations daily. And the courts said they had the right to do whatever was necessary to make a profit.
Corporations started issuing orders that employees be required to engage in the kind of "health regimens" that the corporation approved, even in their own homes, or they would be fired. They claimed they had the right to force workers to produce the maximum they could be sweated to produce and that they should not be allowed to get sick and the courts said the corporations had the right to do whatever made them money.
More recently, people placing comments on blogs that turned out to be uncomfortably true for the lies the corporations spread saw their comments removed, even from "news" sites. They complained about limiting freedom of speech and were informed by quisling shills for the corporatist New World Order that "the web sites belong to the corporations that host them, so they have the right to say what is and isn't printed there."
And, now, a corporation says it has the right to watch you die and do nothing to stop it, to "avoid litigation". And the courts say the corporations are the only ones with rights.
The "law" that states "Corporations have the right to do anything that makes them money and the people have no rights whatsoever" supersedes all else in the courts. The courts are there only to make sure the "rank and file" are punished and the crooked corporations get off free!