Being a health care worker myself for our elderly residents here in Albert Lea for 31 years and reading about the alledged abuse situation at Good Samaritan Society causes a great deal of anger to rise up within me. I cannot fathom how any human being could think that treating a vulnerable person or any other person that way is a joke. I can hardly sit still at my typewriter here as I am writing this. Didn’t these people for one minute realize they were entrusted with the care of someone’s dad, mom, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, etc. Did they stop to think how they would feel if some one did that to them personally? Would it be funny or playful if they were the helpless ones being victimized and degraded? I cannot believe that not one of them, let alone four of them, didn’t have the common sense or human compassion to realizes that this was WRONG! I also have a father in a nursing home here in Albert Lea. The staff as well as our family are there daily to oversee his care. Some families are out of state and unable to do this as our family does. I consider we are blessed to be able to do this ourselves.

As a health care worker you need to have the mind set every time you enter a room that says “How would I like to be treated?” If you are unable to ask yourself this question and be able to follow through with the answer, you have no business being in the health care field. We can’t blame the administration for this as they cannot be there every second, and they themselves have to be careful about the validity of any accusation they make. Being the number of witnesses that came forward, I could assume they had good reason to investigate and report. It disturbs me a great deal that these girls for one second did not realize that these were valuable human beings they were entrusted to care for. It disturbs me even more that they treated it as a joke. We will see if they still think it’s funny now. My heart goes out to the victims and family members of these victims.

Jody Johnson

Albert Lea