Nurses

Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision, sometimes putting seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired caregivers. Emboldened by a chronic nursing shortage and scant regulation, the firms vie for their share of a free-wheeling, $4-billion industry. Some have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct. An investigation by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found dozens of instances in which staffing agencies skimped on background checks or ignored warnings from hospitals about sub-par nurses on their payrolls.

Chris Paul thought Caron Butler was "crazy" for playing in Game 3 of the first-round playoff series against Memphis with a fractured left hand. Paul also said he had to commend Butler for gutting out 22 minutes of pain Saturday afternoon at Staples Center. Butler was injured in the third quarter of Game 1 in Memphis last Sunday night. He didn't play in Game 2 and was supposed to be sidelined four to six weeks recovering from the injury. But Butler practiced Friday and decided to play Sunday.

A newspaper story about a human calamity has a beginning, middle and end for readers, but there is no easy closure for those whose misfortunes provide fodder for such accounts. It has been more than three months since Richard Worthington, armed with a pair of guns and a bomb, burst into a Utah hospital maternity ward intending to kill the doctor who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife.

OAKLAND — The former nursing student charged with seven counts of murder after a shooting rampage at a vocational school in Oakland pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon. One L. Goh, a 43-year-old South Korean national, had also been charged with three counts of attempted murder in the rampage at Oikos University nearly a month ago. Shackled to a chair in the jury box of Department 11 and clad in a red jail uniform, Goh appeared thinner than the day he was arrested in the killings of six students and a school employee.

Re "Boost Funds for Nurse Training," editorial, June 8: Having just had open-heart bypass surgery, I wholeheartedly agree with your editorial about hiring more nurses. Hospitals are not what they used to be. This is what I experienced. When I needed help, it took minutes to an hour to get a nurse to come into my room. I was left alone in a chair in intensive care for 2 1/2 hours. Also, while I was in the hospital, one patient asked to be transferred to another hospital, another patient pulled out tubes and a patient fell.

The California Board of Registered Nursing has taken the following actions against nurses featured in an ongoing series of stories by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica and The Times: Suspended the license of Owen Jay Murphy Jr. in August. He had been accused of physically and verbally assaulting patients at three Southern California hospitals. The board had allowed him to continue practicing while it pursued allegations, but regulators changed course after a July article.

Despite the governor's pledge to better discipline errant health professionals there are signs that it will be difficult to enact sweeping changes as quickly or easily as the administration has suggested. At meetings in Sacramento on Monday and last week, regulators and state attorneys generally spoke of the need for reform but picked apart potential solutions presented to them. They offered no concrete time frames for having a workable system in place. Even officials within the same agency couldn't agree on solutions.

Three cheers for Suzanne Gordon for her article, "Nurses as Partners for Better Care" (Commentary, April 28). She succinctly captured the essence of the doctor/nurse lack of communication. This power struggle negatively impacts patient care. Everyone is the loser. A large percentage of the nation's health care could be performed by registered nurses. It has been estimated that 90% of diagnosis and treatment of a patient can be determined by active listening. In this way, predisposing factors and symptoms can be utilized to give improved patient care.

I'm really upset about the cartoon showing nurses in white caps treating doctors like gods (L.A. Speak, Palm Latitudes, Feb. 7). I'm a nurse, and I work with doctors at the same level. I also create cartoons for nursing publications, but I never rated nurses that low. Please! Nurses are as much professionals as doctors. OSCAR CAIROLI West Covina

Re "Criminal past no bar to nursing in California," Oct. 5 Your article points out that there are a number of nurses with criminal records, and gives examples. Frankly, their criminal records have nothing to do with their job performance as nurses. And it is well known that we have a shortage of nurses. Their criminal records for things like drugs or alcohol and so forth should not be used to prevent them from working. The state of California, through its excessive laws and punishments, has harassed them enough.

HOUSTON -- Houston nurse Verna McClain appeared in court Thursday after her arrest in this week's shooting death of a new mother outside a suburban pediatrician's office. The woman's 3-day-old infant son was taken in the attack. McClain, 30, wearing a pink-and white-striped jumpsuit, was asked by the judge if she understood the capital murder charge against her. She replied: "Yes, sir. " She has not been charged with kidnapping because that's part of the capital murder charge under Texas law, Montgomery County Sheriff's Lt. Dan Norris told The Times.

HOUSTON -- A licensed vocational nurse shot a young mother and kidnapped her newborn son outside of a pediatrician's office near Houston after lying to her fiance about having delivered his child, authorities said. "She needed to justify that she had a child to her fiance,” said Montgomery County Sheriff's Capt. Bruce Zenor at a briefing Wednesday. Verna McClain, 30, of Houston is accused in Tuesday's fatal shooting of 28-year-old Kala Marie Golden. McClain was charged with capital murder Wednesday, and a judge ordered her held without bond in Montgomery County jail.

HOUSTON -- A licensed vocational nurse was charged Wednesday with capital murder after she confessed to shooting a young mother and kidnapping her newborn son outside a pediatrician's office near Houston, authorities said. Verna McClain, 30, of Houston is accused in Tuesday's fatal shooting of 28-year-old Kala Marie Golden. On Wednesday, a judge ordered McClain held without bond in Montgomery County jail, Assistant Dist. Atty. Phil Grant told The Times. Based on the arrest report's chronology of events, confirmed by Grant, witnesses say an argument broke out between Golden and another woman as Golden left Northwoods Pediatric Center on Tuesday afternoon with her 3-day-old son, Keegan.

For-profit private colleges promise to prepare students for employment in fields such as nursing, auto repair, computer technology or cosmetology. Although the programs work for some students, others have complained of paying high tuition to schools that provided inadequate training and gave them unrealistic expectations about future job prospects. Before you enroll, consider these tips from California's Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education: •To see whether the for-profit college you're considering meets California standards, visit the bureau's website at http://www.bppe.ca.gov and search the directory of "approved schools.

By all accounts, the 400-pound black bear, now synonymous with Glendale, is very, very smart. Smarter, authorities say, than the average bear. After he discovered Costco meatballs in a resident's refrigerator about a month ago, authorities say, the bear has returned to the same house in the 3800 block of Cedarbend Drive three times seeking the same dinner. He even monitored trash schedules in multiple neighborhoods, nailing down the days when he could nab free food. But on Tuesday, the meatball-lovingbear'sgood fortune ran out. He was felled by multiple tranquilizer darts in a drama that unfolded on morning television, then was carted deep into the Angeles National Forest with what California Department of Fish and Game officials described as a "heck of a hangover.

For eight months, they studied shoulder to shoulder in a stripped-down classroom with cream-colored walls while planes roared overhead, heading to and from the airport next door. There was a mother of three, and a young woman still living with her parents. A part-time waitress and a part-time mental health counselor, a former lawyer and a former grocery stock boy. One came after years of working for the Tibetan government in exile, another left behind war-torn Afghanistan. They were the latest class at Oikos University's 4-year-old nursing school, all drawn to the same promise: one year of hard work, and they could become vocational nurses, with solid paychecks and guaranteed positions in a field with constant demand.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced most members of the state Board of Registered Nursing on Monday, citing the unacceptable time it takes to discipline nurses accused of egregious misconduct. He fired three of six sitting board members -- including President Susanne Phillips -- in two-paragraph letters curtly thanking them for their service. Another member resigned Sunday. Late Monday, the governor's administration released a list of replacements.

The morning of her second day at Starpoint Surgery Center in Studio City, nurse Melony Currier was found in the parking lot, passed out in her car. Once roused, she was escorted to a drug-testing facility to provide a urine sample. In the restroom, she injected an anesthetic she had stolen from the surgery center, according to state records and a Starpoint official.

The cost of long-term care is the big health insurance uncertainty for Americans 65 and older. How will they pay for long-term care? The biggest shock for people entering the Medicare system is learning that it won't pay for custodial care in a nursing home. Let's say you are 90 and you fall and break a hip. You go to the hospital and Medicare pays for your hip replacement. You go to a rehabilitation nursing facility and Medicare pays the full bill for the first 20 days and for all but a co-pay for the next 80 days.

The Motion Picture & Television Fund has launched a Hollywood fundraising campaign to generate $350 million in support for the charity and its nursing home that was once slated to close. On Thursday the fund announced that DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg had already helped secure more than $200 million in pledges and donations that include his own contribution and those of Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Steve Bing, Casey Wasserman and George Clooney. Katzenberg and Clooney are spearheading the campaign efforts.