Wisconsin Nurse Gets Jail Time for Neglect
Nurse Eileen Lee was sentenced on Friday, July 18 in a horrific case of a nursing home facility "passing the buck". Ms. Lee, a floor nurse, was sentenced to four months in jail and three years probation. She was a floor nurse in 2005, when the facility that employed her, Mount Carmel Medical and Rehabilitation Center in Burlington, Wisconsin, put her in charge of wound care at the facility. Keep in mind, the job she was given was previously covered by five people. She was also eventually named Assistant Director of Nursing and finally the Director of Nursing at the facility.
Overwhelmed, Ms. Lee tried to do her jobs as assigned but the sheer magnitude of her multiple jobs overwhelmed her. She reportedly suffered from "compassion fatigue" and began to minimize the seriousness of the wounds on her patients and failed to properly care for the pressure sores of several residents, directly resulting in the wrongful death of one resident.
At her sentencing, the judge acknowledged that although Lee was "the face of the nursing home", she was not the sole responsible party nor the only guilty party in the case.
