Minnesota

TexasTowelie

(116,768 posts) Mon Jul 6, 2020, 01:40 AM Jul 2020

Nursing home settles with Black employee forced to treat racist resident

Jameisha Cox got hired as a full-time personal care assistant at central Minnesota's Edgewood Sartell assisted living back in 2017. Her coworkers knew her as a hard worker and a “genuine” person.

But when she walked into one resident in particular’s room, she was allegedly greeted with a demand the staff “not let [her] in there.” Except the resident didn’t say “her," instead using a vile slur for Black people we will not repeat here.

The same resident also tried to rip off Cox's headscarf, and her family would "similarly harass [Cox]," according to an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. The harassment got so bad that Cox didn’t want to enter the resident’s room alone. After particularly nasty encounters, she’d sometimes start crying. Cox talked to her supervisor, according to her complaint, and was told the resident was – to use the outdated and offensive term found in the record – “not used to being around colored people.”

“She pays to live here,” the supervisor reportedly said. “There isn’t anything we can do.”

Read more: http://www.citypages.com/news/nursing-home-settles-with-black-employee-forced-to-treat-racist-resident/571567771

5 replies

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Nursing home settles with Black employee forced to treat racist resident (Original Post) TexasTowelie Jul 2020 OP

I know what they can do. Bluepinky Jul 2020 #1

I'm an attorney and defended a certified nurse's aide last year, a position similar to the one in no_hypocrisy Jul 2020 #2

Thank you for stepping up. Bluepinky Jul 2020 #3

Sartell? geardaddy Jul 2020 #4

I had to search to learn about Sartell and where it was located. TexasTowelie Jul 2020 #5

Bluepinky

(2,325 posts)

1. I know what they can do.

Reply to TexasTowelie (Original post)

Mon Jul 6, 2020, 06:03 AM

Jul 2020

Allow only white personal care assistants take care of this patient. Why would the people in charge of this facility subject an employee to this hatred?

no_hypocrisy

(48,782 posts)

2. I'm an attorney and defended a certified nurse's aide last year, a position similar to the one in

Reply to TexasTowelie (Original post)

Mon Jul 6, 2020, 06:07 AM

Jul 2020

Last edited Mon Jul 6, 2020, 12:53 PM - Edit history (1)

the above referenced story.

My client was a Haitian immigrant. Worked in nursing homes for more than two decades without a problem. Even worked in *two* nursing homes full time, back-to-back.

I got involved b/c my client was taking care of nine "residents" at one of her jobs. One of them was a 77 year old woman who was semi-bedbound. The resident never was angry or confrontational -- until one day during a "Family Meeting" with the center's social worker, the resident announced that my client was abusing her. It started with an unfounded charge of getting her foot crushed between a Hoyer Lift and the bed and then she kept adding 14 other charges of emotional, psychological, and institutional abuse -- all within a 90-minute period of time.

What made it racist were the particular charges of the resident felt abused when she heard my client speaking Haitian to another nurse's aide and how my client allegedly would survey what was on the resident's lunch tray, help herself to whatever she wanted, ate it, and then sat down in a chair and fell asleep.

Long story short: It took three hearings and a closing argument of 24 pages, but I saved my client's certification from being permanently revoked, IOW, that the Department of Health on behalf of the resident couldn't prove their allegations.

My client told me that the same resident would moan that she needed money to buy her adult son a new car and a house. My guess is that she was using my client as the first step to suing the nursing home for negligent hiring and a myriad of abuse. If I hadn't volunteered my services, it's likely she would have gotten a nice settlement to go away.