HEAR US — PEF Vice President Pat Baker and Region 12 Coordinator Ruth Gaines listen as Marcia Stulbaum tells lawmakers how she was attacked.
Workers blame understaffing
Lawmakers told assaults take heavy toll in state facilities
By DENYCE DUNCAN LACY
It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
Caring for people with mental-health problems in New York state these days is more dangerous than working in construction or working in a mine.
That’s the message from registered nurses, social workers and other PEF members in testimony in November and December at the second and third in a series of three state Assembly committee hearings.
PEF President Roger Benson is among those detailing the dangers.
“With few exceptions the accident rate at each of the state psychiatric facilities in New York City are astronomically high,” Benson says.
For example, Benson testified, in 1999-2000 the accident rate per hundred employees was 32.7 at Bronx Psychiatric Center (PC), 43.4 per hundred at the Children’s PC in Queens, and 45.8 at Kirby Forensic PC in Manhattan.
“When you compare accident rates at state psychiatric facilities to those of the nation’s most hazardous industries, the difference is dramatic,” Benson adds.
“Mining had an accident rate of 5.9 per hundred workers per year in 1997 and construction had 9.5 accidents per hundred. In contrast, the state’s facilities for the mentally ill had a statewide accident rate of 23.6 per hundred workers.”
OMH
staff sufferingPEF members are telling state lawmakers inadequate safety measures and chronic understaffing mean many mentally ill and developmentally disabled clients are not getting the treatment and therapy they need to recover.
And, the members say, the caregivers and their patients are increasingly in danger.
“I was badly assaulted by a patient at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center on July 5, 2000,” recalls nurse Mary Lou Mann of Long Island.
“Two aides and myself were escorting a patient from a rehabilitation ward to the intensive treatment unit. We were in a lobby between locked ward entrances by the elevators.
“As the patient saw the elevator door open, she turned around, lunged at me, grabbed me, slammed me into the wall and threw me on the floor,” Mann says. “My injuries — including a fracture of the spine and a herniated disc — were so incapacitating that I needed to be taken by stretcher to Southside Hospital.”
“I was the victim and am the survivor of a brutal sexual assault that took place in my office,” adds Marcia Stulbaum, a retired state social worker from Long Island.
“I did all I could verbally and physically to stop the attack, including screaming out the window for help. But my office was on the second floor facing into a large, unused courtyard. He overpowered me and forced me to the stone floor with my head jammed against the wall under the raised baseboard radiator. I thought that the last thing I would see was the underside of the radiator, and that I was going to die.”
PEF Vice President Patricia Baker, a social worker at Kingsboro PC in Brooklyn also testified, calling on legislators to stop “the revolving door” of rushed patient discharges. She warns that too often, because of understaffing, patients are pushed out of psychiatric-treatment centers before they’ve been properly prepared to live in a community-based setting, posing a potential risk to the community as well as a risk to staff and other patients.
PRESENTING THE FACTS (ABOVE)— PEF President Roger Benson testifies on the dangers of short staffing at a state Assembly committee hearing in Manhattan in December. Presenting charts of high accident rates and overtime in mental health facilities is PEF Field Director Robert Jackson.— Photos by Bill Sachs
PEF leaders are also giving
testimony showing the mentally ill client population has
changed dramatically, with more clients who are younger,
male, and have histories of violence, crime, substance
abuse and other health problems. The staff, on the other
hand, are more often older and female. The union argues
that these more difficult patients need more intensive
staffing care.
Disabled clients, staff at risk
Similarly, the client population in group homes and other
facilities serving the developmentally disabled has also
changed drastically. PEF leaders report that their jobs
have become more dangerous, in part, because the
facilities increasingly serve minimally disabled clients
with some criminal background, who’ve been sentenced
to the developmental facility instead of to a prison.
These clients, the caregivers say, are “street smart
and often predatory.”
“One of my co-workers was stabbed by a client who
attacked from behind with a knife from the dining
hall,” Richard Ensminger, a 27-year teacher at West
Seneca Developmental Center tells the lawmakers.
“Unbeknownst to my coworker, this client had
previously been a patient at Buffalo Psychiatric Center,
where she had a history of stabbing others. It took three
co-workers to pull the client away and stop the attack.
“Meanwhile, another client began choking on peanut
butter,” Ensminger continues. “Our already
limited staff ran to perform the Heimlich maneuver, and
then CPR, without success. All efforts were unsuccessful
and this client died.”
And Benson tells legislators the understaffing problem is
so severe in facilities run by both the state Office of
Mental Health (OMH) and the Office of Mental Retardation
and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) that the agencies
are spending a whopping $78 million in overtime annually
in both agencies — enough money to hire nearly 1,100
new mental-hygiene workers.
Legislation could help
Among other actions, PEF is urging lawmakers to pass
three bills this year to address the lack of safety. One
measure (A3820-A) would require safe and therapeutic
staffing levels in all state-run mental-hygiene
facilities. The second (A7344C) would improve safety for
intensive case managers. The union is also asking
lawmakers to enact legislation to mandate transfer of
patients to secure facilities when they repeatedly
assault staff or other patients. And PEF wants lawmakers
to ensure that the staff vacancies in OMH and OMRDD are
filled this fiscal year.
“PEF's testimony to this committee clearly documents
how short-staffing in OMH and OMRDD facilities creates an
unacceptable safety risk to the clients and staff who
live and work in these facilities,” says PEF
Occupational Safety and Health Director Jonathan Rosen.
“New York State must ensure that all OMH and OMRDD
clients get quality treatment and care in a safe and
therapeutic environment. This goal is not being achieved
under current OMH and OMRDD staffing ratios.”