Nurses and staff protest closure of geriatric psychiatric unit at UC Irvine Medical Center
About three dozen nurses and staff protested this afternoon outside UC Irvine Medical Center after hospital officials announced they have closed the facility’s 13-bed geriatric psychiatric unit.
UCI had struggled to fill the unit, and officials decided to close it this week due to cost concerns, according to hospital spokesman John Murray.
“We’re having to look for ways to cuts costs given the state budget crisis and its impact on the UC system and the medical centers in particular,” Murray said.
Patients were transferred from the geriatric unit to two larger adult psychiatric units at the hospital, which are licensed to care for 38 patients, Murray said. Eight nurses from the geriatric unit were laid off and have been offered lower-ranking jobs for less pay in other parts of the hospital, union representatives said.
Nurses at the protest complained that without the geriatric unit, elderly patients will not receive the same level of specialized care.
“The geriatric patients are a vulnerable, fragile group who cannot be mixed with the general population,” said Catherine Montgomery, a registered nurse at the hospital who helped lead the protest with the California Nurses Assn.
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske
EDITOR'S PICKS:
"The geriatric patients are a vulnerable, fragile group who cannot be mixed with the general population".
Exactly right. The old people have different needs and a higher level of care, and are at risk in a mix with younger, more obstreperous patients. In light of the general shortage of gero-psych services, if the hospital cannot fill the beds it needs to find out why. In the meantime, there are plenty of GenPop psych patients who would welcome a move to share a quieter, less stressful environment. This ain't rocket-science, folks.
Posted by: H Hilborn | October 03, 2009 at 08:07 AM
It's okay. Let 'em close it.
There is nothing that psychiatry can do to actually help anyone anyway, including the elderly. They can just force them to take antipsychotic drugs to keep them quiet and non-combative (for the convenience of the staff, naturally).
The drugs don't correct anything. They don't contain ingredients that the body needs for proper function. If an elderly person is manifesting "mental illness," he/she should be given a full physical check-up, which will uncover one or more physical conditions (illness, deficiency, disease) that has been neglected and is causing undetected discomfort which then manifests as a so-called psychiatric condition.
Psychiatry: it's right up there with fairy tales. Let UPI use the beds for real medicine.
Posted by: Steve Wagner | October 20, 2009 at 07:29 PM