2,712 Comments for Fuller State School and Hospital

Lynne,
Your last comment didn't have anything to do with my last posting, did it? If so please let me know what i may have said wrong, i don't want it to seem sa if i am putting down anyone in your profession.

Lynne!...how could you!? >:P hahahaha i'm kidding....i know you guys do excellent work with the disabled, and i can see how it would be a very demanding job but you quite obviously have a passion for it and i respect that..and i don't think i'm alone in that regard. Keep it up

You know what, y'all? I've changed my mind. I am tired of the repeated attacks from people who seem to be more "in the know" than anyone else. So here it is; what some of you have been waiting for:

Yes, the truth is that we beat up all the poor innocent locked-up mistreated people who live in institutional facilities and we ask all the staff to do the same. Hell, we fire them if they don't. We line people up without clothes for laughs and then take pix and show to the public because we are all sick and twisted. We also starve everyone and chain them to the bed because we are bored and sit around all day on our fat butts with nothing better to do. No one knows how to advocate for people with handicaps except people who have never actually seen one. You are all correct - you surpass those of us who have spent years doing this and we have all lied and hidden the truth from you very smart cookies who have finally figured us evil ones out. The jig is up - we're busted! Oops! Our bad!

Happy?

I also wanted to add, could there have been a curtain on the inside that could be pulled closed for privacy, there is something laying across the end of the closest tub.
Perhaps the window is to insure that nobody is accidentally left inside the room.

{{{{{ Lynne }}}}}}

I borrowed your soapbox ma'am. I hope you didn't mind.

Thanks Barbra and lynne,
i just showed this picture to my wife, who took nurse aid training at a veterans facility, and she said they had multiple tubs and showers there also. she mentioned using the hoyer lift and being able to wheel the residents into special showers on a gurney. The other thing she told me was they had tubs with a side that swung open to make it easyer to get the residents in and out.
she agereed with why there were multiple tubs, having to bathe multiple patients at one time. She was confused as the reason for the observation window, although there has to be a reasonable answer for it being there, it would be to costly and labor intensive to have been put there " just for fun "

{{{{Lyric}}}}

Our friend, the Hoyer lift!

http://www.opacity.us/image1952.htm

I think they are higher up because these were for patients that couldn't bathe themselves, and an attendent would have to help. Being higher up would make it easier for the attendent so they wouldn't have to bend over so far. How they got them up there, though...hoverlift?

Lynne, these tubs are placed rather high off the floor, are they men't for the severly handicapped?

Thank you, Lyric! You carried and supported your points very well and I don't think you could flame anyone with them! Thanks again! :0)

(borrowd Lynne's soapbox)

Alliecat-
Lynne does fully admit that mistreatment happened in these places. She admonishes very openly those persons who did/do mistreat patients.

You are right, mistreatment comes in many forms. However, some of these places were over crowded and badly understaffed with no funding to hire more persons to help care for the patients who needed it.

In the case of this bathroom let's create a scenario.
There is one staff member who has 8 patients she is responsible (CA Law is a 4 to1 ratio).
6 patients are medicated and compliant, who aren't causing any current problems, 2 patients are on suicide watch and have been for several days.
You need to see to it that both of them have access to a bath, but you can't leave one of them unsupervised because they are also at high risk for escaping.
You can't let the other one in the bathroom because it has shower curtains and other metal objects that a desperate person who wants to commit suicide will get really creative in the process.
How then, would you be able to make sure they are both bathed without leaving either of them unsupervised?
The solution is simple. 2 tubs, one room, a door that doesn't lock from the inside, and a window for you to watch, to make sure that one of them didn't convince the other to carry out the act.

Yeah, this is extreme, but in many cases, it is an easy solution.

Same with a parent who has 3 kids under age 5 and it's bathtime.. You load them all into the bathtub at the same time. You aren't mistreating your children doing this because there is no privacy. You are actually doing yourself a favor because if you were to leave even one of those children alone and something were to happen.. Now you are in a case of child endangerment and neglect.

Some of these bathrooms where there was 2 tubs(or more) to a room. Were occupied by one patient to one attendant. To ensure safety.

Yes, in modern society and the way we advocate patients now, it does seem cruel and almost inhumane.
There is a little more funding, they try to not over crowd the facilities, and to keep staff at an optimal number.
(that's mental health care utopia)

When some of these places were open and had only a 1000 patient capacity, you could find close to twice that number in residence at some points.

Abuse does happen.. However it happens less and less now with education and intervention. We remember the abuse stories because we are all morbidly fascinated with them.
So they never go away.


Please note. I am not trying to flame anyone. I really just want everyone to look at some of this with a different perspective. No different than Lynne.

Re: Mark's comment - this was not a happy place! They closed this place down for mistreating residents. So Lynne's lengthy explainations about how the place wasn't really evil seem to me to be begging the question. Let's HOPE that the practices in a place closed for repeated violations are not anything like those of the places where Lynne has worked!

My perspective is a little different. As a children's advocate, I can tell you that hospitals can and do mistreat patients. Sometimes lack of privacy is used as a punishment. Sometimes the staff is too overworked to care. And sometimes, In the worst cases, individual caretakers consider the mentally ill, the retarded, and the (all too often) perfectly healthy minors imprisoned in these places by their parents as less than human and take pleasure in tormenting them.

I can't see a justification for two bathtubs in the same room with no curtains. It's inherently humiliating and it runs the risk of teaching the staff to think that humiliating patients is standard practice. In a nice, normal hospital, the staff may have to watch you bathe, but they go out of their way to maintain the illusion of caring about your dignity.

Not to mention - it's not safe. If these particular patients really do need constant supervision while bathing, two patients at once sounds like a very bad idea.

Kewl, El Steveo - thanks!

Lynne- Sorry, that wasn't meant to mean that ALL people working there were cruel, just a select few. However, the "few" were all most people ever hear about.