A recent column of mine addressed the rise in the number of elder abuse cases and spoke about abandonment as one of the issues on the increase. I received a fair amount of response from that column, but none sadder than the two-page letter from a Wisconsin woman whose father endured years of financial, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his own son.
The office of Sen. Kohl, D-Wis., provided me with a copy of the nine-page document that provides the background on this important act and the justification for such legislation.
1. Frail elders are highly vulnerable people who often lack the ability to give consent or defend themselves. Since the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, individuals with histories of abuse pose a definite risk to patients and residents of long-term facilities.
2. Every month, there are stories in the media of health care employees who commit criminal misconduct on the job and are later found, through a background check conducted after the fact, to have a history of convictions for similar crimes.
3. A 2006 study conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services determined: Criminal background checks are a valuable tool for employers during the hiring process; the use of criminal background checks does not limit the pool of potential job applicants; and a correlation exists between criminal history and incidents of abuse. The long-term care industry supports the practice of conducting background checks on potential employees in order to reduce the likelihood of hiring someone who has the potential to harm residents.
Passage of Sen. Kohl's Patient Safety and Abuse Prevention Act of 2008 is worthy of our attention and well past its time for passage.
Barbara Quirk is a Madison geriatric nurse practitioner.
Abridged
SOURCE: The Capital Times - Madison,WI,USA
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