November 14, 2008 Headline in news stories are an editors attempt at grabbing your attention long enough to get the reader to read the news story. One that I see from time to time focuses on the "nursing shortage" that seems to be a contributing factor in the mess that is health care in America. I am a nurse. I am out of work. Lost my job after one month. My bosses had "difficulty" with the decision to let me go, they told me, and I believe them, that they fought to keep me, but I was let go. In the face of a nursing shortage my employer chose to fire me despite my bosses protests. Allow me to elaborate. In late September I learned that I was being investigated for an allegation of "abuse". This was due to a course of events in May, when I had two paramedics and a police officer called in by me to transport a combative resident to the hospital. This resident had tried to hit one of the paramedics, and the police officer was not successful in talking this resident on to the gurney, when I saw the resident head for the dining room, which was filled with residents eating their dinners, knowing that the last time this had happened this resident went around dumping the dinner plates of other residents on to the tables they were trying to eat at, I knew I had to act to keep those other residents safe, when I approached the resident, the resident screamed, and tried to bite me, I put her in a bear hug, lifted her off the ground and walked to the gurney and put her down. This took about one minute from start to finish. This action was the abuse I have been accused of. The restraining of this combative and dangerous resident, the bear hug restricted her movement you see, was apparently disturbing enough that one of the three people who I called in to help me called my state nursing board to report my actions. And one of my aids supposedly called the state as well. The facilities response when contacted by the state was to suspend me, with pay, while they investigated the incident. The state conducted an investigation of its own. I was told I was exonerated. That was wrong. In late September I learned that the state investigated the facility I was working for, and not my actions. Now, in September, a state investigator told me that the state was still investigating, only now it was me that was being investigated. I answered all questions asked of me. I was told this was information gathering, and the investigator would gather all the information available and pass it up to the people who would decide how to classify my actions in May. The investigator told me that the "worst case scenario" would be that I would not be allowed to work with a vulnerable population ever again. Vulnerable population is a legal term that in essence means all children, long term care residents, people who are vulnerable, or in practice where most of the nursing jobs are. This information was quite upsetting, and I called my boss at work and asked her if she knew anything about this investigation. She did not. She spoke with the administrator who called me back to tell me they were suspending me until they could talk with the corporate level managers. I called the state investigator and asked her if she had called my boss, she told me she had been at the facility in late August, the administrator had been talked with, my notes of the incident had been copied and provided to the investigator, when I asked why my work was acting as if they had never heard of this the investigator had the same question. Then next day my administrator called me to tell me that I was being terminated. I asked her when she was planning to tell me this and she told me that as long as the facility was being investigated she felt she did not need to tell me anything, but since it was who me who was being investigated, the decision had been made to terminate me. Shocked feelings do not begin to describe my reaction. I call the state investigator and I tell her I was terminated for telling my employer something the must have already known, the investigator said that was unnecessary but it happens. I asked her for some guidance on what to do next, the investigator told me that since my license was still "clean" I had no work restrictions, I could work wherever I could find work. Now at this point I am dumbstruck, how can this be possible, it seems like a nightmare but it is real. I go on unemployment and think for a bit. A couple of weeks go by and I am hired as a resident care manager at another facility in the same state. I appear to be appreciated, and I am often praised for my handling of the job and how I have dealt with some serious family issues with this facility. After about a month someone tells the director of nursing services that I am being investigated for some incident that happened at my last job. This person is unable to provide any details of the termination of the investigation. I am called into the administrator's office and I am told that the corporation believes that "if someone is walking the plank, we want to go out and bring them back from the edge. You don't have to tell us, but if there is anything that I need to know, before it becomes a walk the plank problem, tell me". I believed this, I knew from the state investigator talks that I did not need to tell anyone about the investigation, but this administrator seemed to believe in me, so I believed in him. I told the administrator everything, the director of nursing services was there and heard everything too. They both said that I appeared to have acted properly, and in the same situation they would have acted as I had acted. Corporate policy dictated that the administrator had to inform his boss about this. I thought that this was fine, thinking that they were now coming to aid me. About two hours later the administrator called me in to his office, the face of my boss told me this was bad, I asked if I should sit down or stand up, the administrator said I should sit down, I did, and he said he did not know how to tell me what he had to tell me. I told him just tell me the truth, and the truth was that I was in my probationary period and they were letting me go. I said that I was fine with that decision, he asked me if I was really OK with this decision and I said no I am not but I can see its been a difficult couple of hours for you. He replied that this was a decision that he and my director were struggling with, I said that I believe it was nothing personal and he said that if anyone is going to ask him he would say that they had lost and excellent nurse and he wished me luck. My director of nurses looked ill and said she was not OK with this decision. I called the same state investigator, and she tells me that a decision has not been made yet and it may be a "couple of months" before any decision is made. Which brings me to this post. What to do now? Apply for open nursing jobs only to have this issue hang over me, possibly loosing another job while the state has a good think about what I did in May? Having to go to my doctor a third time in a year asking for documentation about why I am taking medications that show up on a drug screen is not something I want to do, but will need to do for any new job I may land. Or do I quit nursing altogether, take the cut in pay and live miserably ever after? Do I wait out the state and assume that they will see what I did as insuring the safety of my residents and exonerate me? How long must I wait for that? And if it goes the other way, the state decides to place a restriction on my license, what then? Get a lawyer and fight? Take the sanction and shut up? Leave nursing and take my twelve years of experience as a registered nurse with me? If there is a shortage of nurses in this country, maybe its because we get treated like I have been treated since late September.
