Glenwood Gardens retirement home didn’t give 87-year-old, Lorraine Bayless, a chance to live longer.
After Bayless collapsed in the dining room of the retirement home in Bakersfield, the nurse on-hand refused to provide any assistance.
Instead of performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which may have helped extend Bayless’s life, the nurse decided to follow facility policy and “immediately call emergency medical personnel for assistance and to wait with the individual needing attention until such personnel arrives,” according to a written statement by Jeffrey toomer, executive director of Glenwood Gardens.
When the retirement home had those words written into its policy, it effectively said “No” to this woman’s life.
In the gut-wrenching audio it paints the picture of how this retirement home has failed to establish moral values.
Why does a retirement home have nurses if they won’t provide life saving methods such as CPR, which the American Heart Association teaches 12 million people annually to perform according to www.heart.org, when one of their residents is near death?
Even though the nurse should be trained to do CPR herself she closed the door on Bayless’s life when she told the dispatcher “not at this time,” when the dispatcher asked “Is there anybody that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die?”
CPR may not have worked, but the nurse should have at least attempted to help the dying woman and if the CPR did work the nurse would be a hero instead of a questioned nurse who made the wrong choice.
Along with the nurse choosing to watch Bayless die, the retirement home’s policies need to be brought into the spotlight as well.
Why would a place allow such a policy to exist?

The retirement home has nurses who are trained in CPR so why not just let them do what they’re trained to do and save lives.
For Lorraine Bayless, she will never know the answer and if she was still with us I’m sure she would be knocking at the doors of Glenwood Gardens asking for a refund.
Where the retirement home would meet her with an empathic, “Not at this time.”