FORMER NURSING ASSISTANT SENTENCED FOR NEGLECT

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announces that a former geriatric nursing assistant at Chester River Manor, located in Chestertown was given a six month-suspended sentence and placed on two years of unsupervised probation (as a result of her guilty plea to second degree neglect of a vulnerable adult) by Judge J. Frederick Price in the Circuit Court for Kent County. Donishia Wilson, 22, of Kristin Way in Worton, MD plead guilty in connection with an incident that occurred on February 5, 2005 while she was on duty at the facility and responsible for the care of the victim who is a resident of the facility. She also completed 50 hours of volunteer community service prior to sentencing as ordered by the court. While on probation, she is prohibited from working or participating in the hands on care field in Medicaid-funded facilities.

The victim is an 87 year old woman who suffers from dementia, seizure disorders, chronic pain as well as other health related issues. The victim also has extremely fragile skin. As a result of this latter condition, the victim's plan of care required that she could not be transferred in or out of bed by only one person. The victim experienced a severe skin tear on her left wrist and hand requiring 32 sutures when Wilson, who knew of the victim's condition and plan of care, grabbed the victim by the wrists and pulled on her skin in an attempt to transfer the resident from her bed to her wheelchair. Wilson admitted that she was frustrated with the resident who was agitated and combative. Wilson acknowledged that she had been trained to simply step back and seek assistance under those circumstances and that she failed to do so.

This case was investigated and prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which has authority to prosecute abuse or neglect of vulnerable persons in facilities that receive Medicaid funds.