Nursing Home Workers Caught Betting On Patient's Death

http://www.michaelpage.com.sg

Talk about insensitivity.

As a patient lay dying at a nursing home in the south central Swedish city of Växjö, three workers thought it would be a good idea to place bets on how long the patient would last before dying.

When the patient did pass away, the workers also thought it'd be a wise idea to reenact "Weekend at Bernie's," the 1980s film in which two insurance executives prop up the corpse of their dead boss to fend off hitmen.

Placing sunglasses on the dead patient, the two temporary and one permanent worker were soon discovered. Another temp worker caught wind of the antics, and reported the trio to the upper echelons of the operating Attendo Care group. All three were fired, according to a report by The Local news service, which provides English-language reports about Sweden.

Speaking to the Swedish outlet Smålandsposten, Attendo Care press officer Jonas Morian said the three didn't deny their bet.

"Yes, they admitted it, but there were varying degrees of how seriously they perceived it to be," he said.

The 24-year old Sweden-based elder care provider has had a rough go of it lately, apart from having become a gaming house.

With immigration as hot a topic in Europe as the looming debt crisis, a property owned by Attendo in Solna, located just north of Stockholm, has recently turned into a flashpoint for local anxieties over immigration.

When rumors spread over the Internet in March that teenage refugee boys had made unwanted sexual advances on young girls at a local pool, the boys soon became the target of local anti-immigration activists. Roughly 30 protesters appeared at the housing facility where the boys were staying. The house, run by Attendo, requested greater security in expectation of future incidents, according to another report by The Local.

But of all Attendo's incidents that stand out, few offer the embarrassment the way one unfortunate death from 2006 does. An 83-year-old man dying of dementia in an Attendo house based in Upsala was left lying in his feces so long that it dried into his skin, according to a Local report. When his condition was finally discovered, the only option for treatment was so painful that the patient was given morphine. As The Local reported, he died soon after the treatment.