Patty Berisuer: Wearing heavy scents at hospital puts lives like mine in danger

To The Daily Sun,

I recently was an inpatient at LRGHealthcare and had an incident that I’m hoping that this letter will reach out to all the staff so they are aware of what can happen.

Now LRGHealthcare has a policy against employees wearing heavy scents but this doesn’t seem to stop people from wearing them anyways.

My first night there the nurse I had wore lotion and when I questioned her about it she stated "yes" she likes to lather herself with her lotion. I have severe asthma so this nurse caused me to have an asthma attack. Please, please staff, there is a policy in place against wearing fragrances just for this reason. Your selfish behavior caused me to be put in distress, causing me to struggle breathing — all so you can have soft skin. This is not fair to me as a patient to go through this. Why do you feel it necessary to as you said lather yourself with lotion, which is against policy?

The night supervisor tried to find another nurse in the hospital without a fragrance to take care of me but all others ALSO had fragrance on.

I have filed 4-5 formal complaints on this subject alone but all that has been done is the person is "spoken to." When will this facility learn, do I need to come close to death for them to really address this issue? Do I need to hire an attorney and take them to court? I was removed from my position at the hospital after 18 years because of coworkers wearing fragrances.

Please, aLL staff at LRGHealthcare, understand that by you wearing fragrance you could be putting someone’s health and life in jeopardy.

Patty Derosier

Danbury