The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "staff shortages" ...
-
Parking Patients
"Parking Patients" examined the amount of time hospitals in the Memphis area were taking to assume custody of patients brought to their emergency departments by city ambulances. In hundreds of cases we found patients were spending hours strapped to ambulance stretchers, waiting inside emergency departments for hospital staff to sign off on the transfer of care. In the meantime, city paramedics were tied up waiting with the patients and unavailable to answer other emergency calls. We found dozens of cases in the last year in which the city ran out of available ambulances to answer these calls, and had to rely on private companies to fill the gap, sometimes resulting in longer response times. The fire department blamed these shortages on the practice of hospitals using paramedics as "free labor."
Tags: broadcast; hospitals; paramedics; patients; waiting; ambulances
-
Questionable Care
This five-part series looked into to accidental deaths in nursing homes in the province of Manitoba, which had tripled since 2000. Series installments discussed an overview of findings, problems with bed rails, staff shortages, neglect and reactions to the findings.
Tags: Canada; international journalism; Manitoba; nursing homes; senior citizens; health care; negelect; bed rails; staff shortages
-
Careless Detention
Four-part series on the medical treatment of immigrant detainees in the United States. Goldstein and Priest exposed the shoddy, unethical and, at times, fatal treatment of immigrants during their detentions and as they were being deported to their native countries. Their stories led readers deep inside America's network of immigration prisons--a world that had grown exponentially in the years since 9/11, yet remained largely unknown and hidden from view. Their stories documented the deaths of 83 detainees. And in one of the most stunning revelation, Goldstein and Priest disclosed the previously unreported scope of a practice of forcible sedation of immigrants with dangerous psychotropic drugs during deportation to their native countries; they found more than 250 instances in which the drugs were used on people with no history of psychiatric problems. Their stories also revealed that the most prevalent cause of death among the immigrant detainees is suicide, including the hangings of detainees known to be in such fragile mental health that they had been assigned suicide watchers. They profiled the slipshod treatment of an ailing Korean immigrant, a legal U.S. resident for three decades detained in a rail in the Arizona desert, with a history of recurrent cancer. And they documented the flawed medical practices, bureaucratic ineptitude, sloppy record-keeping and staff shortages that cause detainees who are sick to suffer and sometimes to die.
Tags: detained immigrants; September 11th; 9/11; medical treatment of prisoners; immigration prison; HIPAA
-
Nursing Home: Frail and Forgotten
The Kansas City Star investigates eleven nursing homes in the area with a high number of serious violations for harming residents or jeopardizing their safety. Using a database of cases of safety violation in the nursing homes and comparing them with nursing homes in Kansas state, Mike Casey analyzes few of the best nursing homes in these two states. He also looked at why some of these problems arise in these nursing homes including shortage of staff and poor training.
Tags: nursing homes; deaths in nursing homes; injuries in nursing homes; safety violation in nursing homes; nursing homes in Kansas City; nursing homes in Missouri; nursing homes in Kansas
-
380 more officers
Enough overtime pay and compensatory time occurred in the Milwaukee Police Department to hire 380 more officers. This was due in part to "court system inefficiencies and contract clauses."
Tags: police; salary; wage; overtime; court system; staff; vacancies; officer shortages;
-
Get out of jail free?
A WKYT-TV investigative series reveals that many convicted and sentenced criminals in Lexington are "walking away from prison time," as their cases end up in probation or parole. The story reveals that judges address the problem as a "necessary evil to prevent ... the overcrowding of jails and prisons...." It also shows how, because of shortage of staff, probation officers often fail to keep tabs on most probationers. The reporters have been able "to hit pay dirt a couple of times as people charged with crimes like trafficking in cocaine, armed robbery and rape were probated."
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; courts; crime; judges; repeat offenders; legislature
-
Day Care Investigation
WESH-TV investigates "how the state of Florida tracks and monitors day cares" and finds that "no such system exists." The analysis finds that "nearly 44 percent of all day cares have broken the law at least once during the past five years" and "twenty-three percent of them had repeatedly violated the law." The series exposes problems like shortage of staff, "children left alone, others wandering across streets and into neighbors' {businesses or} yards ... falsifying training records {and actually operating without a license}." The reporters also reveal that "some day cares change their names ... but nit their questionable way of doing business." The television websites provides a list of day cares that have been cited and/or fined by the state Department of Children and Families.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; DISKETTE; Florida Freedom of Information statute; day care; crime; Florida's Department of Children and Families
-
Lives at Risk: An Emergency Room Investigation
A WFAA-TV investigation of the county hospital in Fort Worth reveals that the medical staff there "knew needless mistakes and staffing shortages were allowing patients to die inside the emergency room. Some doctors and nurses had even begun to covertly copy patients' charts, not wanting a record of the errors and staffing problems to disappear." The WFAA-TV spent two months researching these doctors and nurses claims, and found serious problems at the hospital.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; Fort Worth; doctors; county hopsitals; health care; Texas
-
Doing the Crime But Not the Time
A Charlotte Observer investigation delves into the problems of "crime and punishment in Mecklenburg County and North Carolina." The five-part series in March reveals that "criminals in Charlotte are getting away with robbery, rape., assault, and occasionally even murder." The analysis finds that "driven largely by a corps of repeat offenders, Mecklenburg's crime rate ... remains ... the state's highest," with "homicides and car theft on the rise." Amongst the key findings is that "if you commit a violent crime in Charlotte, you're only half as likely to go to prison as criminals across the rest of the state." A comparison with the practice of other cities shows that "nationally, many urban prosecutors imprison a larger state of suspects." The series also reveals that "poorest neighborhoods are among those with lowest punishment rates" and that "criminals who escape punishment often go on to victimize others." The investigation sheds light on staff shortages at the courts and prosecutors' offices, and "a funding squeeze [that] compromises judges." It also details the offenders' tactics to avoid punishment and the prosecutors' ways to counteract them.
Tags: crime rates; repeat offenders; courts; prosecutors; police; arrest records; felony; prison sentences; DWI; drugs; murder; criminals; prosecution; jail time; sentencing; Database Mapping Project
-
Spotlight on Secrecy
This installment of the Guardian's annual probe into the state of public transparency in San Francisco reveals trouble in compliance with the state's six-year-old Sunshine Law, and a disturbing shortage of documents in the "paperless offices" of city government.
Tags: FOIA; Freedom of Information; Sunshine Law; city government