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His medical records - appropriately - are confidential. Patients receive complete physicals yearly, and diagnostic tests like blood work more often as needed. A key element that has been disclosed about Mr. Perez' case is that, although the extent of his medical problems was known, he refused treatment for them. Patients under the PSRB have not been declared incompetent. They have the right to refuse treatment. Yes, this puts treaters in a bind, but would you take away that fundamental right?

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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Any discussion of problems at Oregon State Hospital should include the topic of mandatory overtime. It is both an indicator of funding problems and a source of deteriorating care.

Mandatory overtime occurs when the daily staffing needs exceed the number of staff scheduled plus those who volunteer to work overtime. Staff on duty are told at the end of their eight hour shift that the they are required to stay for another eight hours. There is no option. The impact of this on staff alertness, productivity, vigilance and, ultimately, patient care, morale and employment longevity is immense. Consider this common scenario: An employee has completed a 2PM to 11PM shift in one of the most dangerous workplaces in the state. Then, instead of going home and sleeping, she must stay on the job through the night fully alert and vigilant, until 6:30AM. Having been awake for a full 24 hours straight, she can then race home, try to sleep a few hours during the morning, and get up in time to be at work at 2PM for another eight hours. By the end of that shift she will have worked 24 hours out of the last 32. Any chores, tasks, relationships at home are essentially abandoned for the 2 to 3 days it takes to recover from the equivalent of severe jet lag.

This is a common event. The amount of mandatory overtime has increased dramatically over the last three years. Staffing is in a downward spiral where vacancies cannot be filled faster than they occur. Staff  are, on average, less experienced and more poorly trained than they have been for many years. Consider that, in a time of very high unemployment there continue to be many vacancies. This raw fact speaks directly to the working conditions.

Here are the number of hours of mandatory overtime worked, by quarter:

2006 

Qtr4 1279

2007 

  Qtr1 1315
  Qtr2 943
  Qtr3 541
  Qtr4 557

2008 

  Qtr1 1466
  Qtr2 1985
  Qtr3 1770
  Qtr4 2372

2009 

  Qtr1 1481
  Qtr2 4171
  Qtr3 3290
  Qtr4 3063

Richard Yates (retired following 30 years of employment at OSH)

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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