Woman accused after elderly patient gets shut outdoors, nearly freezing to death -local story

Should this woman be charged with elderly abuse.

This article is a heart breaking story to read. After reading over it a few times, I have come to my final consensus on the issue. When it comes to working in any facility where there are residents that may have a legal disability due to many different causes. The person or people in charge should take actions on all the possibilities. While reading through you will notice that they never state if there are more people involved with taking direct care of the residents. The article states, “Although an alarm sounded, Cook - who was responsible for patient care and supervision - reportedly shut it off without checking the patio, the complaint stated.” I believe Ashley Cook, the women shown in the article should be found criminally guilty for the damage of this man's life due to malpractice of her job. He was said to have been locked out and even had to bang on the door several times even to get no answer. This man’s life was damaged at the hands of this women’s negligence. I believe the family has the right to sue, Ms. Cook and the facility under civil law. The facility needs to take responsibility for the women they hired and entrusted to take care of their residents. There should have been more people on staff that could have heard the alarm. The article does not state there being more people in response to the call light, but action should be taken place. Being someone who is training in a Certified Nursing Assistant class and have personally seen attempted breakouts there always needs to be a responder at hand to insure the safety of the residents in the building. Residents should be taken proper care of and need to be checked on according to their care plan. No one deserves the abuse of almost freezing to death, especially those with a legal disability and can not fend or take care of his or her self. It is in the job to take care and secure safety whether someone who can do it themselves or someone who can not. Though I think this is a very sad article, I think that it should be up to the family who is in charge of the resident, whether it should have been published. This article can be taken many different ways and the immediate family should have say. The family could choose to keep it between them and the facility/caregiver or spread the tragedy to inform people that stuff like this happens and we need more people who have compassion and caring qualities to get the job done and improve safety.

1. Title of article: Woman accused after elderly patient gets shut outdoors, nearly freezing to death

2. Name of publication 1: Daily News by Nikki Young http://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/news/local-news/2017/03/woman-accused-after-elderly-patient-gets-shut-outdoors-nearly-freezing-to-death/

3. Date of publication 1: March 28, 2017