Abuse, threats mark Hanford nurse’s history

Woman was convicted of burning her son with a hot iron, later violated her probation and was fired for withholding medications from patients

By Leslie Parrilla

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Vocational nurse Carole Elaine Rose was convicted of child abuse and battery against her 17-year-old son and was once arrested for allegedly threatening to kill patients at a Hanford nursing home.

Such critical facts, however, were unknown to the state Bureau of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians. That is because Rose had never been fingerprinted. Had she been, her information would have become part of the state’s database, and regulators could have learned within days of her arrests.

Rose’s problems occurred in the Central Valley town of Hanford and show the statewide scope of the problems involving nurses with criminal backgrounds.

In 2001, Rose’s 17-year-old son told investigators he had placed an iron on the kitchen shelf after using it to press clothes on the first day of school in 2001, said a report by the state Department of Consumer Affairs. When his mother reached for the appliance, she burned her finger. She yelled at him and held the scalding iron against his arm to teach him a lesson.

Rose was later convicted on child abuse and battery charges related to the incident.

That should have come to the attention of regulators when Rose renewed her license in 2003 — but she marked on the application that she had not been convicted of a crime, according to the consumer affairs report.

By 2004, Rose monitored the halls of Kings Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Hanford while on probation for the child abuse conviction.

Investigators stumbled across her criminal history while looking into a complaint that she was not dispensing medications to her patients at the nursing home.

Hospital administrators fired Rose in July 2004 for withholding medications from patients with serious conditions such as congestive heart failure, diabetes and emphysema, according to a nursing board complaint.

Investigators were shocked to learn that Rose allegedly threatened to shoot and kill patients and staff at the home. She allegedly told the son of a former patient after her termination that she should “get a gun and shoot every one of you,’’ a board report showed.

Prosecutors dropped the charges as part of a plea bargain when Rose admitted to violating probation for the child abuse conviction.

Additional problems at the Hanford nursing home included Rose threatening a nursing assistant who had allegedly assaulted her sometime between December 2003 and July 2004 and failing to report patient mistreatment linked to a death at the nursing home, according to a board report.

When contacted for this story, Rose denied she threatened patients and withheld medications. She said she never harmed her son, but that he had burned himself with the iron.

She lost her license last year for the child abuse conviction and for not issuing medications to patients.

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