Pinelake Health & Rehab

PHI’s thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by last Sunday’s mass shooting at Pinelake Health and Rehab, a nursing home located in Carthage, NC (“Suspect’s wife sorry for NC nursing home shooting,” AP, April 1).

According to the AP story, seven residents and one nurse were killed. Robert Stewart, 45, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with all eight deaths.

Stewart’s estranged wife, Wanda Gay Neal, is a nurse’s assistant at the Pinelake facility and was present at the time of the shooting.

Dr. Saundra H. Spillman, executive director of the North Carolina Direct Care Workers Association, told PHI that the incident was an unexplainable act of violence and expressed her sympathies for the workers and residents there as they try to move on from this tragedy.

“I don’t know if people know how hard it is for staff when they lose residents to illness. To deal with it in a normal sense of aging and disease process is one thing, but to have to deal with this…you don’t even think about this happening to this group of people. …This work is a challenge in good times but in times like this, you really have to pull together.”

McKnight’s has published a column by Dr. Eleanor Feldman Barbera that offers strategies for dealing with a tragedy (“Coping in the wake of the North Carolina nursing home shooting,” March 30).