Posted on 05/05/2006 3:45:22 AM PDT by SheLion
Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne found them dodging traffic in wheelchairs and walkers. Folks are starting to get used to seeing "no-smoking" signs at bars, restaurants and public buildings. But, what happens when a nursing home bans smoking without making any accommodations for residents?
Crossing the street in front of the Bremerton Health and Rehabilitation Center is not for the faint of heart, but that's exactly where we found the faint of heart traveling.
No matter their disability, if residents like Donald Pike want to smoke, the center told them they have to leave the property.
Chris: "I don't see a crosswalk."
Donald: "There is no crosswalk."
Chris: "I don't see a real smooth curb."
Donald: "No. No. Smooth curb. No. Nothing saying stop when somebody’s crossing the road."
We videotaped disabled residents limping, shuffling, even creeping their wheelchairs into the road with no staff around to help. One man nearly fell. Another disabled smoker couldn't do anything but watch.
“It's scary and especially if it rains, if we have a little snow, somebody could slip and fall and hurt themselves just to have a cigarette,” said one resident who was in a wheelchair.
“Bob” is a physical therapist for clients at the Bremerton Health and Rehabilitation Center. He risked his job to share with us his displeasure with the new no-smoking rules imposed on clients.
“I didn't believe it at first. I thought they were joking, but it was true. You're asking people who are already at risk for a fall, whose mobility is impaired, to go through the obstacle of walking hundreds of feet on unleveled terrain, over a curb, then across a real business street?”
We obtained an internal memo that states residents can no longer smoke on nursing home property. But why not?
Washington's law allows smoking in places like this as long as the cigarettes and ashes stay outside 25 feet from the door. The uncovered, designated cement smoking seat is a treacherous one block walk from the center's front door.
Resident David Olguin says that’s too far and too treacherous a journey for most.
“They go pretty slow on that hill. The cars go pretty fast. One of them is going to get run over,” Olguin said.
Administrators here were camera shy, but told us disabled residents didn't have to cross the street; it was just a suggestion. They admit, however, they want residents to quit smoking and won't permit the bad habit on nursing home property any longer.
Our videotape proves that owners of the nursing home don't have any trouble asking residents, already in frail health, to stand in the rain and cold weather to light up.
Pike complains that the new smoking ban has gone too far saying, “This is my home, ya know. Why do we have to go across the road to smoke? This is my home!”
Just to check on any other potential "quality of care" issues here, KIRO Team 7 Investigators pulled the Bremerton Health and Rehabilitation Center's February health inspection report. It's 58 pages filled with 14 separate code violations, many of them dealing with staff being inattentive to residents’ safety and welfare. Inspectors tell us if they'd have seen what we saw, they'd have tacked on a few more violations.
The week following our last visit, the center faxed us this statement. Although defending its right to ban smoking, the agency adds. "Based on recent concerns, we are looking into the creation of a smoking area with seating on the edge of our property to better accommodate residents."
Several lawmakers in Olympia tell KIRO Team 7 Investigators they believe the smoking ban should not apply to assisted living centers. House Bill 3130 reflects that, but the legislation is currently "on-hold."
Who ever runs this nursing home should be shot!
There is no reason on earth why they are treating the elderly like this. This is elderly abuse. The nursing home is their home. They have no choice but to live there. Why can't they be accepted and just live there in peace.
I was in a four banger with three others whose combined age was about 600. I couldn't get any of them to play cards or anything else, all they did was lie around moaning.
After two days of this, I dragged my self and my IV across the hall to a private bathroom for a smoke. The floor nurse burst in and demanded I cease and desist or she'd, "put you on report!"
I replied, "Who you gonna report me too, the F'n principal?"
About half an hour later my bags were packed and they shipped me home.
We had to move her from assisted living to a nursing home, as she required a higher level of care, and naturally, the "home" was smoke-free.
When they took her smokes away, she went to sleep, and refused to wake up.
No longer taking the medicines she needed to sustain life, she died after a few days.
Honest to God, you can't win for losing when dealing with fanatics- my Dad quit smoking in his seventies, and when he died 25 years later, one of the damn Docs pronounced, "Yep, the smoking did it..."
I hope that if I ever have to enter any nursing home ,a friend will shoot me as I enter. I might even shoot myself the day before.
I didn't know nursing home residents would still be smoking that late in life... The way they push the ban you would think that smoking killed more teenagers than anything else.
About half an hour later my bags were packed and they shipped me home.
metesky, they are sick and obsessed. To be treated like this over a legal product is mind blowing.
Where will it end? I'm surprised you didn't punch her lights out. I wouldn't have blamed you if you did. But then, you would have really been put on report! heh!
It's too easy to just blame everything on smoking. When "they" don't know the real truth, they just spew "Yep, it's the smoking." They get right off the hook with that statement. Very very sad...............
And if this is the way the elderly is going to be treated, I don't want to go there either.
I know it. If we believed their stupid numbers, none of us should be alive let alone alive and still smoking! I wished the general public would wake up to the anti's lies and spin.
Some are better than others , but they all suck.
Would chewing tobacco help?
I chew and as far as I know it hasn't been banned anywhere yet.
Just wait 'til the smoke nazis start whining about second hand spit.
I pray for the day we are free of these fanatics who are crazy enough to become fronts and follow orders of those that are even crazier.
The best known fronts are Hiltery and Booba who are being rewarded in all kinds of ways for being the scum they are.
Some day these people will be brought to justice and it can't be soon enough for me. Dictatorship and tyrany are not for America.
Every time we're at my in-laws and my mother-in-law wakes up in the morning it sounds like she is trying to cough a lung up. The only time I've ever felt that is during and right after a bout with bronchitis. So I'm going to assume that she has chronic bronchicial infections, I'm sure that her being a moderate smoker has nothing to do with it.
Would chewing tobacco help?
Never. Not for me.
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