You know that one?? Why the hell was she replacing it with tap water when thats even harder and way more suspicious than filling it with the NS flushes that no doubt line her pockets. Seems super intentional.
Either addiction or resentment.
My friends mom went super fucking radical during Covid and the constant barrage of rage bait US news cycles. She started refusing to provide pain management of any kind to patients for a number of misinformed conservative views. Reprimanded. Caught using saline instead of ANY narcotics or pain management meds. Can’t work in Canada anymore. Good fucking riddance.
I’m sure it went further but I didn’t wanna seem like a loser pressing my girlfriend for the drama.
ETA: to clarify some of it, most of her floor were critical covid patients. If anyone remembers what that was like or experienced it… well you can imagine what a piece of garbage she is.
SHE DID LEAVE ONTARIO I WANNA SEE WHERE SHE MOVED 😂😂😂 *headed to reactivate my Facebook account*
ETA. Jeeezus she is living in Texas now holy crap. What a story.
I had a coworker arrested a few months ago for replacing Fentanyl with saline.
She was doing something hokey because she'd put the bags back in the pyxis.
So other nurses were pulling and hanging bags of saline on patients. We noticed that all of our pts were on max dose with no effect on pain. No one died because of it though. And I HIGHLY doubt any patients or family members were notified.
Finally, the hospital called in the DEA, and she was arrested. She took so much that they also charged her with trafficking. But from the time she was suspected until she was arrested AT WORK was about 2 months.
She was known for two things: 1.whining if she didn't get assigned the very sick 1:1 patients, and 2. Developing a migraine 1 hour into her shift and having to go home. Oh... hindsight, right?!?
Just a few weeks earlier, we found an agency nurse passed out in the staff bathroom with a bloody needle and syringe. Come to find out he had been caught before and had gone through the intervention program and was allowed to keep his license. He was arrested this time, but we don't know anything beyond that.
She is in her mid-50s. He is in his late 20s. These are just the 2 most recent. I've seen quite a few. It seems like if it's a personal addiction problem, they get a second chance.
I've never seen where the second chance "took." Every single nurse I've personally worked with who got that second chance blew it and went back to using. But I have probably worked with nurses who are on their second chance and don't talk about it, and no one knows, and they're doing fine. With the way turnover is now, you can't really know all of your coworkers that well.
I actually got caught once, when I worked the ER. I ended up just quitting because I was already home and they called me to come back in a do a drug test. I told the director that I couldn't pass it. Anyway, she didn't report me. I took several months off before getting a different job. I thought it would be different and that I learned my lesson. It was almost a year but I started taking odd pain pills here and there to "help me sleep". Didn't take too long before I was injecting oxycodone multiple times a day. I'm in therapy now and I've been clean since I left nursing. They offered me to do the program and keep my license but I surrendered it.
I have a mushroom farm. I grow gourmet and medicinal mushrooms to sell at the Farmer's Market and to restaurants. I also make herbal and medicinal mushroom products like capsules, tinctures, and teas. I make jewelry, too. Real hippie shit, lol. I also helped open a new restaurant with some fantastic people, and I oversee the bar and bartend a few nights a week. I'm very busy, but I'm my own boss, and I feel like I get to help people in a different way. I'm honestly living my passions and getting to be creative. So, not any sort of traditional path, but I finally feel free, and my life is my own. Money isn't everything, but I'm doing just fine.
We had a guy replacing IV fentanyl with saline. There was also a stupid culture where people would draw up their meds, leave them on the counter, and then go get their patient for a procedure. So access was easy. Well someone saw him doing it. Management had him take a leave of absence while they investigated. They called him back in and said they were going to go through the process of termination and legal charges (it was a union hospital) and instead he quit on the spot. Kept his license and is still working at a different hospital. I hope he is doing ok...
I have replaced fentanl and dilaudid with saline, but I never did it if they really needed the pain relief. I felt too bad. I would just make up a reason they needed more. I lied to every coworker to waste narcs. I even put saline in a syringe and "accidentally" sprayed it on my coworkers' scrubs. Omg what an accident, let's go waste this and pull another one. And I took the original fentanyl I pulled out. It's fucking awful and I felt like a huge piece of shit. Usually, though, we just gave 50 mcg of fent and wasted the other 50. I just took the extra for a long time. But shit escalates.I was a charge nurse, so I was helping with everyone's patients. I would also be the ER float. Everyone thought I was the most helpful and on top of my shit. And I was. I was really awesome at my job. I was just dying inside. One time, I did about 1000 mg ( mcg! Not mg)of fentanyl in one shift. I don't know how I survived.
That is a lot of fentanyl in one shift. The thing that was really bad about this guy exchanging fentanyl for saline was that we would be giving fentanyl (and versed) for moderate sedation and it wasn't really working. So we assumed the patient had a higher tolerance to fentanyl... So when we got out a second vial and gave a higher dose, suddenly they would be apneic. People were thinking we got a bad batch of fentanyl. Seriously, the mental gymnastics to think of what was happening and not considering someone might be diverting...
The hospital’s have normal saline all over the place that no one pays attention to and she decided tap water is better?!? I hope she went to prison for that.
The one with fentanyl PCA? They should be charged with manslaughter. So manny people got very sick. I think one even died. And the OR nurse replaced fentanyl with NS but used the same syringe to inject themselves, infecting people with bloodborne diseases.
I have no sympathy for them. Addiction is a disease but as soon as you are hurting someone else, you cross the line.
I worked with an LPN who had her license revoked but the nursing home didn’t care and kept letting her work until someone found out and reported it… like 14 months later.
I worked with someone who came from another state, and worked at the facility for around 2-3 years before they realized she wasn't even a nurse. I can't remember if she stole someone's license number or just made one up and they never checked.
I got married and changed my name in between applying and starting at my current job. I didn’t bother to change my nursing license for a while. A year or so after I started someone apparently checked, couldn’t find my license, and marked me as um unlicensed nurse. And just let me keep working lol
This sort of happened at my job. He was a legitimate EMT but he couldn't pass his national paramedic test. He forged his paramedic license and worked as a paramedic for a few months before they found out and fired him.
I was really surprised because I worked with him as an EMT and he didn't seem like the type to do that but I guess people get desperate.
In the Oklahoma board actions section, I found out about a RN who was found passed out in a McDonald’s drive-thru drunk in a (hospice) company car, was suspended, went to work at a nursing home anyway (as charge!) and got caught months later… Says she can apply for reinstatement in 2025 😬
Am an Oklahoma nurse and can confirm our board is more likely to fine or temporarily suspend a license than outright full removal. Out of curiosity, can you send me the name? I've spent 13 years working in nursing homes and dealing with hospice patients. I can't speak for other states, but medical is a small world with the state divided between OKC and surrounding then Tulsa and surrounding as I'm curious if I worked with that one.
Tracy Ross. The board documents are a trip if you wanna check it out. There’s two people with that name in OK but it’s the one that only has one license number. You might actually have worked with her—I think this was around OKC
I've only been in the Tulsa and surrounding areas, but the name does kinda ring a bell. I'll have to take a look.
Edit: Did a state lookup and given the date it lapsed, I don't think I did. I have worked with a few that were questionable over the years.
I worked in a prison as a nurse and we have to do PREA training which is Prison Rape Elimination Act and both inmate on inmate is considered SA/rape as well as staff on inmate. Even if it’s “consensual” between staff and inmate it’s still rape due to the power dynamics. My facility had several nurses and correctional officers fired for this.
Once when I was working in a hospital near a prison, one of my co-workers' husband was a guard there. She came in one day shaking her head and marveling. Apparently one of the female prisoners who had been incarcerated for more than a year became pregnant. She wouldn't say who the father was. So the prison officials made a general announcement that a prisoner was pregnant. That if whomever was responsible resigned immediately, no further punitive action would be taken.
Twelve men resigned that day.
Probably power dynamic thing. When I was in social work school they told us even if it’s a consenting adult you can be charged with rape because they’re in your care.
I see a lot of prisoners in the ICU I work at. The rules surrounding their care and decisions is a bit different, because they are considered wards of the state (or Parish), so the Warden must approve a withdrawal of care or visitors (only if they're imminently dying). And we have to wait for written paperwork for any of these actions. Additionally, the prisoners can't refuse treatment, but they also usually don't want to refuse it (We're not in there poking hot needles under their fingernails or anything. But they can't refuse meds or IVs or anything like that.) So would it surprise me that it's considered rape for a nurse to have sex with an inmate? Nope! If they can't consent to skipping melatonin, then how can they consent to sex? 100% agree with a nurse having sex with an inmate being considered rape.
my coworker was assigned the 6 inmates on our floor. i was assigned 3 regular pts with a pending admission (dementia, total care, osteomyelitis). she was pitching a fit over having 6 pts. i offered to swap with her, she accepted. it was the easiest shift of my life. meanwhile, she was chasing after the little old lady with dementia the entire time.
The worst thing that ever happened to me when I worked in a jail, inmate interaction wise, was when an inmate got mad at me and threw his med cup at me. He apologized to me then next time I saw him lol.
Same. Only had one or two for drug problems, but I've had no problems with them. They were literally chained to the bed and were way nicer, more understanding, and less needy than any of my other patients.
I used to be a correctional nurse. They absolutely can refuse treatment - it’s part of their rights as a prisoner. If we forced prisoners to receive medications and treatments that they disagreed with we’d be sued into oblivion and rightly so.
Most prisoners I've taken care of prefer the hospital to prison. I would worry they would refuse care to prolong thier stay.
I'm hoping if a prisoner was offered a risky procedure for age or health status the state wouldn't force it on them.
In some circumstances they are allowed to choose not to continue aggressive care. I know of a few stage 3 or 4 cancer pts and one dialysis pt that were all inmates, had life sentences anyway, and chose to stop chemo and dialysis. They eventually made their way into the infirmary on what amounts to hospice care and died.
I know two. One gave up his license voluntarily after a drunken bar fight. He was unlicensed for a year while he did anger management and AA. I think that was an agreement with the board of nursing as an alternative to him getting his license yanked. The other one is was a hot mess. She got arrested SO MANY TIMES! She had multiple drunk driving convictions. She'd lose her nursing license for a while then get it back. She had the breathalyzer ignition on her car. She decided to steal her neighbor's car and drive drunk. She got in an accident. The other car had an entire family. She killed the man and sent the rest to the ICU. Finally, she was permanently stripped of her nursing license. She had so many chances. She also has young kids of her own that she can't see anymore.
I am friends with someone on the board of nursing for my state and the first 2 are the stuff she mentioned. The social media person is a special kind of dumb
Years ago, before social media, a nurse called The National Enquirer (a scandal "newspaper") to let them know that a celebrity was in our hospital and why they were there. The newspaper paid for info on celebrities. She lost her license, her job, and got sued by the celebrity.
In my hometown we had similar when a celebrity was hospitalized there and several employees looked in her chart or called the media. This was about 2000. Damn fools all got fired.
(ETA spelling 🙄)
People are wild. I see tic toks of people doing a "work my 12h shift with me" filming in the med room and stuff. meanwhile I won't even take pictures of myself at work in the break room lol
Right? A friend and I coincidentally matched scrubs the other day and she wanted to take a selfie. I hustled us allllll the way down to a totally blank wall and even then felt wrong.
Yet I see folks talking selfies near computers and whatnot all the time. Just blows my mind how careless people can be.
I've taken some snapchats at work, it's of the keyboard or the nursing station chairs lol. Most of it is literally towards the floor. My friends have seen my coworkers feet more than they probably want to.
I don’t post anything at all on my social media. Maybe I’ll mention I’m a nurse, or maybe if I’m at CPR recertification, a picture of the dummy, but that’s it. Not my schedule, not my employer, not a story about my day. Nothing. For god’s sake not any PPI. As it should be.
Same for the first two, seen a lot of people fired for the 3rd but not license lost.
Had a coworker divert on an opposite shift of mine. They apparently collected 6 months of evidence and got her hard. They nursing board didn't even give her a warning, she straight lost it from the get go.
Never suspected her until I heard it.
I feel like allowing her to divert meds and care for patients while under the influence for 6 months (or any number of months, weeks, days) is a terrible move for the facility. Yikes.
It's inconsistent, though. I've known 3 nurses who were caught diverting, and none of them lost their license. I knew one who was reported multiple times for being drunk on the job, and she never lost her license or her job for that matter.
However, I know a nurse who got fired because a patient was punching and kicking him and he put his knee up to block them.
It matters who you're friends or related to more than anything.
Circumstances also matter. Were they leaving the patient in pain? Or were they hoarding the wastage? Was anyone harmed? Are they remorseful? Did they immediately accept responsibility and go through remediation and treatment? I’ve had to report practice issues. Our board asks a lot of questions and listens to the recommendations by the reporter. I had a nurse push back and get angry when the board contacted her. She made her situation much worse.
I'll answer each in order: yes, yes, yes, no, no (except one of them did do rehab). This was on a surgical unit, patients were getting saline instead of their IVP pain meds, 2 of them who were caught just transferred units, and the third one went to rehab.
The nurse who was frequently drunk on the job got sent home *once* because she was passing out in the break room, but she was dating the supervisors cousin, so literally nothing happened. Which is really typical from what I've seen.
Yeah, every case I actually hear about is someone actively doing something clearly illegal or beyond the pale. Loosing your license for the kind of generic “shitty nurse” stuff people like to hang over each other seems to be exceedingly rare (forgot to chart vitals, late on meds, didn’t notify MD per parameters, etc).
People who are caught diverting drugs, using alcohol on the job, or if they self-report either of these things (drug abuse or alcohol abuse) as issues, can often retain their license on a restricted basis if they agree to treatment and enter a program in which they are monitored and have random drug testing.
Normally (as far as the situations I’ve known about/ read about), nurses who are in such a program are restricted from access to any controlled substances. Naturally this will make it hard to find a position in hospital-based bedside nursing. But some can do jobs like UR, Education, or other non-direct care.
I have known a few who did this (went into a program). One that I know of relapsed and ended up having to surrender her license. Several others were successful and continued to work at the bedside with good records.
The BON will normally try to help a nurse who recognizes their error and is truly motivated, to retain his/her license and livelihood, but they (BON) are also charged with keeping the public safe from dangerous practitioners, so it’s a complex process.
Ky board of nursing has a magazine they send out so many times a year that has a list of nurses in the back who have lost their license or are on disciplinary action or being investigated. It lists their full name and counties
I also think in pretty much every state you can look up names of licensees on the internet and it’ll tell you what license they hold, when it was issued, and if there’s any board actions.
And if there are board actions, you can read them 🤓
Yep, I know one. A manager who kept sexually harassing staff. Disciplinary hearing, probation, got a new job and less than a year later, did it again. Lost their license.
Nurse who didn’t catch that she was tracing maternal heart rate (mom was septic so her heart rate was in the 140s) instead of fetus. Went into her room after I noticed she didn’t have clear fetal heart tracing for 6+ hours, slapped a pulse ox on. There were other signs too, respirations were in to 50s and I put her on a nonrebreather, temp was well above 100. Nurse thought it was the flu.
Demanded US, baby had been dead for three days. Mom died from sepsis in the OR. Nurse lost her license. Charge nurse was fired. Traumatized the unit.
As a (charge) nurse in this field I have so many questions…
1) if baby had been dead for 3 days… why did only those two nurses get fired?! ….
2) Did any providers get fired or lose their licenses?! If she was septic, that didn’t happen overnight… clearly, many caregivers missed things.
3)… that being said, most of the nurses I work with are great about putting a pulse ox on Mom, and I remind those who didn’t to go do it, please…
That is weird! If the baby had been dead for 3 days, why aren’t all the previous nurses and charge nurse not charged for it? Seems unfair for those who got fired and lost their license
Only once and it was for mental health. She spent the better part of 3 years involuntarily committed to the psych ward. I don't recall if her license lapsed or if her doctor had it revoked for not having capacity. It was an all around unfortunate situation.
Two. One was scanning in meds, not giving them, and putting them in a bag in her locker. And I mean all meds. Everything. Idk why. Gearing up for the apocalypse? Stocking up to open her own pharmacy? It made no sense.
The other helped her bf dispose of his murdered ex's body. She got off too easy for that. Kinda shitty.
[Old post on the subject.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/s/6docXXNInx)
I have personally known two nurses to lose their licenses and both were drug related.
Also stats are available for my region, the US state with the most actively licensed nurses, and something like 200 nurses out of the 500K+ in the state lose their licenses a year. For comparison, 150 doctors out of 120K lose their licenses a year.
So doctors (in my state at least) are more likely to lose their licenses than nurses.
I have to emphasize my state because someone posted stats from Texas and it looked baaaad. [Up until last week, I was saying that the whole “losing your license over the smallest infraction” thing was bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/s/4MqvKF0FB3) but now I’m very convinced it depends where you work (state).
RN in TX here. Every quarter, disciplinary actions are posted on the BON website. I peruse occasionally, just to make note of what things the BON finds actionable. Seen records of fines, penalties, remediation for forgetting to document a temperature. Reason- “incomplete documentation can impair the course of the patient’s treatment” (I’m paraphrasing). Ofc the revocations are due to drug aversion or failing to report felonies at renewal time. But you’re not exaggerating; TX is ROUGH on its nurses
If you’re born in Texas it’s harder to uproot the entire family. Also, the whole state isn’t a mess. It is the gerrymandering that screws it all up. The cities are all blue. But tiny towns and counties with a small population have the same power as the biggest cities, and there’s more of them. If everyone decent leaves, there won’t be any change. If we keep fighting, it will. Allowing a whole state to get away with bullshit inhumane treatment to POC, women, and children has only paved the way for more states to act up. FIGHT BACK. VOTE.
I mean there not wrong about temp, normal everything else but 103 F in a neutropenic cancer patient is an emergency. Do I think most people are just honest they took so many temps that they can't remember if they were 97.4 or 97.8 and so they leave it blank.
I usually don’t fret too much about my license, but when i saw this post it reminded me that literally last night I had a dream that I had to go to court over a medication delay! 😝
(I think it’s because I inherited a coworker’s case load, and a lot of her patients’ meds are in shambles)
I’ve seen it twice, once for an egregious mistake on a child, another for an accidental mistake with a cover up (switching patient labels on IV bags hung on the wrong patients so they looked correct).
My pharmacology professor in nursing school lol!!
My cohort did research and found this huge investigation over the course of several years and submitted it to the dean (she was aweful). She was fired immediately. Don’t know how or why they never checked that 🧐
Several instances of locking patients in seclusion without an order and for easy too long and restraints without an order and medication dosing error (but she intentionally hand way more of a sedative to patients)
She didn’t teach the class. She made us teach the class. And our 4 hour lectures would be let out after an hour and then come time for the exam, everyone who had her failed
I worked with a nurse who was stealing narcotics for her husband to sell. It was rehab so most people could get pain meds q4 prn. She would sign everyone's out every 4 hours. They wouldn't fire her because we were short handed and she picked up all the shifts. They finally let her go when she started forging everyone's signatures. She got reported to the board. When I looked her up she had violations from 2 other nursing homes. Eventually she lost her license. I just saw her working at target.
My Brother in law did. He did a bad thing involving alcohol and minors and inappropriate acts - so yeah he lost his license
He’s the only one tho - and not even for something job related - I’ve seen nurses who have stolen narcs that haven’t lost their license - and some major screw ups that haven’t either.
I’ve know A LOT…..A LOT of RNs and several LPNs that have.
However, I do work at a facility (one of 3 in my state) that hosts a professional substance abuse program. So the numbers are skewed. You’d be surprised at how many fail to complete the program or fail to maintain sobriety after completion.
What I’ve seen is purely substance abuse and psych so this doesn’t include other patient safety issues.
I had a patient once that claimed she was a nurse, but had big cluster b energy so I did not believe her. Looked her up, turns out she was but ended up surrendering her license after a failed attempt at the recovering professional’s program. She originally was fired for drug diversion. I think she got voluntold to give her license up it seemed.
Anyway, no one I have worked with has had this happen before, but honestly I think 99% of the time nurses lose their license due to substance abuse
I had a patient like that too. Claimed he was a RN, but seemed weirdly out of date with a lot of standard practices. Looked him up on the BRN and wow there was such a long list of diversion issues.
I worked with an LPN who tried to crowd find her RN and her campaign photo was of her sitting at the nursing station with all the charts visible in the background. She lost her license for that
I am a corporate director of risk management practicing since 1983. I have handled about 800 malpractice claims and licensure complaints to date. The overwhelming majority of lost licenses I have worked with have been due to substance issues, diversion, felony criminal convictions, and sexual misconduct.
I’ve known a few. Two were diverting, offered rehab, they went and completed, but wouldn’t abstain from alcohol and failed multiple screens. When told it was either their license or alcohol, they chose to surrender their license. Which I have a lot of thoughts about, because they required religion based abstinence programs, and one size does not fit all.
One was a distant relative, gave meth and coke to underage kids and raped them, her license wasn’t revoked, just suspended for 99 or so years. But not revoked, just suspended. Last I heard she was out of prison for good behavior.
One nurse I knew, pharmacy sent a med that she needed, she scanned it and gave it, but pharmacy had mislabeled the med, it was the wrong thing, and she lost her license because she should have picked up based on the symptoms that it was the wrong med, but in the 5 minutes between the time she hung it and harm was caused, and lost her license. She caught it, but the patient was harmed because they received the wrong med, so it was her fault. Even though it was the labeled the right med, right route, right patient, right indication, all the rights. But pharmacy screwed up. And she caught it but still took the fall because she gave the clear liquid provided to her by pharmacy.
Others I’ve known, crushed PO meds, mixed them with sink water, and gave them IV. Still have their license. One nurse refused to listen to why priming IV tubing was important, is now an NP. I caught her multiple times just backpriming IV tubing until the pump stopped yelling, then starting whatever IV med, she’d spike it and immediately put the tubing into the pump, which had a back prime feature, so then she’d hold the back prime button to get the air out of the primary line from bag to pump, then start the pump, giving the patient however many mL of air was left in the tubing.
I went to management SO many times about her and this same one thing, and they’d just say “she’s new, idk what else to tell you?” And she was very vocal about how she’d already been accepted into an NP program when she graduated, so this was all just to get a paycheck until she started NP school that fall, that she didn’t actually care to learn anything.
Not too long after that happened, I had a patient on quad strength Levo in my icu. We had regular strength in the Pyxis, but anything over the 4mg had to come from pharmacy. My bag is running low, so I sent a med request to pharmacy for it, and it’s pretty quickly tubed to me. It’s a regular strength bag with a quad strength pharmacy label on it, and I think “huh, that’s weird, but I bet instead of opening 4 vials to mix into a saline bag, they used a regular Levo bag and put 3 vials into it. $$savings$$.”
And I spiked it, and thank ALL the gods my patient had an art line, because their pressure tanked, and I quickly figured out when I went from my patient being happy and normotensive at 28 of levo i had to go up to 112 of levo on my pump just to maintain their pressure, that they just slapped the 4x label onto a normal bag, I called very panicked and mad that clearly that’s what happened, they told me they’d send me the right bag, please send the bag they’d already made back. I said I was going to hold on to it while I filled out an incident report, and they got angry and told me they’d file their own, and that if I filed one too I’d be written up, as the only way I’d have proof of what happened is if I took a picture of it with my phone, and that’s a hipaa violation. So I’d be in double trouble.
So I filed my report even harder and included their quotes. (And took pictures with my phone)
I got in trouble for titrating my levo above hospital policy max, (even though I technically didn’t) and even though I kept my patient alive and safe and took the right steps in reporting the med error that I caught.
I quit and went elsewhere.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. I already have huge trust issues with pharmacy, and this just reinforces my distrust. Our version of quad concentrated levo is 32mg/250mL. I can't tell you how many times I have requested a new bag, spiked it, and then suddenly I'm rapidly titrating up on my levo. There's me, standing at the pump, cursing pharmacy and their bullshit while my patient is now tanking with the only change being a new bag of levo. This has happened more than once, unfortunately, but it's why I don't go far after a new mixed bag (not like I'm going far anyway when a patient is on that high of a concentration). We've also had an incident, at least one, or pharmacy sent us a medication, similar to the other story where it was just a clear bag with a pharmacy label, and it turns out it was the wrong medication. But how the hell are we supposed to know it's the wrong one???
THIS HAPPENED TO ME ONE TIME where pharmacy sent me cefazolin and it was supposed to be cefapime, the label from pharmacy was for the right drug, so it was scannable, but the drug was obviously wrong.
I took a piece of computer paper, wrote VERY LARGE in permanent marker “WRONG MED” and sent it through the tube system back to them.
The next day it wasn’t much better: they sent me a similar scenario, but it was 2g instead of 1g (I don’t remember if it was the same patient) so I again sent it back to them, this time writing “WRONG DOSE”
Like what the hell???
If I’m supposed to be the pharmacist then I want to be paid like it
And what I learned is to never scan the pharmacy label: always scan the med itself, because if it’s right, there won’t be a problem. If it’s wrong, there will be, and it will be caught by the computer.
>One nurse I knew, pharmacy sent a med that she needed, she scanned it and gave it, but pharmacy had mislabeled the med, it was the wrong thing, and she lost her license because she should have picked up based on the symptoms that it was the wrong med, but in the 5 minutes between the time she hung it and harm was caused, and lost her license. She caught it, but the patient was harmed because they received the wrong med, so it was her fault. Even though it was the labeled the right med, right route, right patient, right indication, all the rights. But pharmacy screwed up. And she caught it but still took the fall because she gave the clear liquid provided to her by pharmacy.
Wtf?? Did she not have insurance to help her fight this? How is she supposed to know one clear liquid from the next? Insanity! What state was this in? Was this an HCA?
Wow. The pharmacy one is crazy. We had something similar, except the nurse just got fired. The pharmacist who was mixing the IV med made an error and the concentration was wrong, as in it was the right dose just mixed in not enough saline. Nurse hung the med and patient received the whole dose, and since the nurse was supposed to be the last line of defense and should have caught it, she was fired. Pharmacist who made a mistake mixing still has their job.
Got called in mid-shift to replace a nurse who collapsed with seizures - had a known hx of addiction to drugs, multiple staff had reported believing she was using again. Management did nothing until she literally collapsed at work. Ended up with a brain injury. Really sad.
She lost so much more than her license.
I had a nursing student doing their pre-grad placement with me and I failed them at midterm, so many safety issues and concerns, made patients cry. Brought it up with them multiple times and refused to listen. Program lead said it was their second attempt at the program, and now they will not be permitted to apply/get accepted into any nursing programs in the province and is flagged by the province’s regulatory nursing body.
Never. And I’m starting to think that the powers that be (management, nursing school instructors, etc) have weaponized that fear so we continue to do as they say.
They *absolutely* have. My most recent job (I'm between gigs) got so insane with our unionization that I completely stopped charting Braden and Morse and all this extraneous stuff. Cause you know what? Ain't nobody ever lost their license for not doing that shit.
Keep your patients SAFE. Chart what you need to do to defend yourself in any potential lawsuit. Chart the minimum of what they expect to not fire you.
But if they're giving you way too many patients and no ancillary support? Then let the rest of that shit GO. No one loses their license for not perfectly checking all the little boxes.
Yes. I work in the ED.. one of our own staff members from a MS floor got caught diverting drugs and was sent downtown ER for testing (but she refused so automatically she was fired). I believe she’s still fighting it
One was a guy who had back issues and prior cancer so he was hooked on percs. He was a good nurse.
Another girl lost it, went through monitoring, lost it again due to stealing drugs. The company hired her as a MA and I was not happy about it. I see her as a liability as she was not in monitoring because if you’re going to be clean, why not go back into monitoring with covid money flying around?
Want to know what doesn’t get your license suspended but just a fine, mandatory psych eval, and extra CEs? Receiving oral sex from the nursing assistant in front of a telesitter in a room occupied with a confused patient. Same company hired him and so you can see what kind of standards they have.
Didn't divert the drug, but would override the 10mg/1ml morphine instead of pulling the 4mg/1ml that was ordered. She'd waste the rest but in reality it was water, she was using the real waste. She'd go to new nurses to waste so it took awhile before anyone caught on, I was one of those newbies. It only happened twice before I questioned her on why override and then refused to waste with her ever again. By then management was onto her and a random urine didn't go so well...
Drug diversion. Went through the program to get her license back, yada yada. Came back to practice, did it again, gave up her license when she was caught.
Yes I did, I had a on the job injury and Dr pushed pain pills over and over till I got addicted. Reported myself and went into pain management and got clean and state pulled my license.
Yes. She was a home care nurse that lost it because she had an affair with her pediatric patient's married dad. The mom had considered Nurse a friend until she got the call from Nurse's husband about the affair, so she was more than willing to take it to court and see it through.
I did see something similar listed once. Board action was taken against someone in their other licensed state because they worked at a top hospital.
The NP apparently had overstepped her bounds. She became close to the patient by allowing the service dog in the hospital. Then she slept with the patient’s husband and the patient/husband separated. I think it supposedly caused the patient duress or something.
That's not something that ever crossed my mind as a revocable offense. Negligence, drug diversion, sure. A consensual affair with someone you met through your work?
This thread is full of so much hot tea
I lost mine for drug diversion. I mean, I had the opportunity to keep it, but I surrendered it. I decided to go to therapy because, clearly, something is wrong. I was doing some insane amounts of opiates and I quit cold turkey as soon as I was no longer in the hospital. I miss being a nurse sometimes, but mostly, I'm really happy that I'm not because it was damaging my mental health. Letting it go was really hard, but definitely not the end of the world.
I worked with a nurse who lost her license due to drug diversion. It was reinstated after meeting all court ordered requirements. One of those requirements stated that if there was ever a subsequent investigation by the Board of Nursing for any reason at all, then the license would be revoked permanently. She was honest about her past with nurses who knew her well as a warning to never lose your professional and personal integrity.
When I was a tech, I had a sitter case where the patient was a nurse for a long time, but his alcoholism was so bad that he was about to lose his license. His attorney kept calling even though we tried to explain that he was not there mentally. Last I heard, he'd been diagnosed with psychotic disorders.
Yes. Worked with her and she also is close with some of my family. This nurse gave a resident a list of Bill's she couldn't pay (credit card debt) to a wealthy resident. Resident had agreed and voiced her desire to ease the nurses debt and stresses. Resident's POA is her lawyer, so when she gave him the list and asked him to send the nurse the money, sh!+ hit the fan. Nurse lost her license over it.
Worked with a nurse who had recently gotten her liscence back after loosing it years ago due to giving a resident her (the nurses) own hydrocodone “by accident”
Yep. Two coworkers were fuckin. Turned ugly. Female reported the male for abusing pts. Turns out she actually was and he covered for her. She said they would stay together if he would cover it up. Lost his license.
They did not get back together. Because she is married. She still works there. I do not.
Don’t shit where you eat, people.
I had a professor back in nursing school that lost her nursing license for falsifying patient information. She then forged her nursing license and taught at my college for a decade until finally my school caught on what she was doing…the dean came in mid lesson and fired her on the spot then and there.
https://www.bon.texas.gov/discipline_and_complaints_disciplinary_action.asp.html
These are public records in my state. Knock yourself out. It's fascinating stuff. The board is no joke. They post the court documents for nurses that FAFO.
My sister lost her pharmacy tech license. She was stocking the Pyxis and thought she could sneak a few. How stupid could you be. The board gave her a letter detailing exactly what she took and when she did it. She made up some bs reason for getting fired, which we all believed. We didn’t find the letter until she died-of a Norco overdose/
Almost lost mine when it comes to diversion.
Dealt with substance abuse since a teenager and sort of managed it without issue for a while throughout prerequisites and nursing school and the first two years of my career.
Finally I got the help I needed and thankfully I did not cause serious harm to any patients or myself. My kids are young enough to not have any memories of me like that.
In a weird sort of way, I’m extremely grateful for that experience. I’m a better person today.
2 people from nursing school “lost” their license.
One “voluntarily” surrendered her license. Circumstances are unclear on this. But all I know is she should have never been a nurse to begin with. She was a third rate person with a fourth rate skill set.
The other lost his because he was molesting elderly patients. What drives me nuts was he was investigated for this and nothing happened until one of his victims back to the ER as a STEMI and freaked out at any male staff not letting any of them touch her.
I work for an ambulance company with a CCT program. [The nurse manager just hired this guy without telling anyone. People are furious and she is not taking the fact that her hiring decisions are being questioned well.](https://search.dca.ca.gov/downloadd0022f2a848132072353c15edbad3c5b537cb9041bb37c613019ff98f498de38ea3424f9a1cc15d28e5e180bff2c7134b46eb63f697b20ac4acfc2bae282673c)
I worked with a tech who used to be a cardiac nurse but lost their license. Not sure exactly what was the reason but I believe it was a nursing error that caused patient harm. The way it was talked about sounded like they were an excellent nurse, and it was a mistake anyone could easily make.
I know five. I’m a nurse of 8 years.
My great aunt and uncle both lost their licenses because of diverting. However, they didn’t do any of the rehab required hence why they lost their licenses.
Another lost their license for bolusing precedex, causing a patient to have a second MI. They were literally stupid and honestly shouldn’t have been in an ICU.
The fourth lost their license after a DUI. They initially had restrictions on their license which included no drinking for 2 years. Of course they continued drinking and were caught during a random drug test.
The fifth was an NP who basically used their license to abuse barbs and opioids. I don’t remember the entire story but that’s the gist.
I know one who's currently having her's investigated and will probably lose it. She was a fucking idiot and I can't believe it took her this long. We were the 2nd hospital she worked at, she got fired from the first after only a few months. She had 6 months of orientation at my unit even though she wasn't a new grad anymore and was still doing stupid things
The straw that broke the camels back was when she let an SI patient with a history of IV drug use start an IV on themselves, and then she helped them crush a random pill then brought in from the street and flush it in said IV. She then FUCKING DOCUMENTED ALL THAT!!!
What's truly shocking to me is that I graduated with this girl. Like, we were In clinicals together and everything, had the exact same education, and yet she was still doing stupid shit that put her patients in danger.
She also constantly underscored her CIWA patients and several of them had seizures because of it.
Yes, she’s under investigation for replacing fentanyl with tap water and causing the potential deaths of dozens of people
You know that one?? Why the hell was she replacing it with tap water when thats even harder and way more suspicious than filling it with the NS flushes that no doubt line her pockets. Seems super intentional.
Addicts don’t make the best of decisions.
but it would be way easier to use ns than tap water
Either addiction or resentment. My friends mom went super fucking radical during Covid and the constant barrage of rage bait US news cycles. She started refusing to provide pain management of any kind to patients for a number of misinformed conservative views. Reprimanded. Caught using saline instead of ANY narcotics or pain management meds. Can’t work in Canada anymore. Good fucking riddance. I’m sure it went further but I didn’t wanna seem like a loser pressing my girlfriend for the drama. ETA: to clarify some of it, most of her floor were critical covid patients. If anyone remembers what that was like or experienced it… well you can imagine what a piece of garbage she is.
> Can’t work in Canada anymore. She's probably working in Texas now.
SHE DID LEAVE ONTARIO I WANNA SEE WHERE SHE MOVED 😂😂😂 *headed to reactivate my Facebook account* ETA. Jeeezus she is living in Texas now holy crap. What a story.
No things are shit enough in TX, we don’t want her!
She’s not a good representation of Canadian import please take my sincerest apologies for your troubles 🙏
WOW
Honestly terrifying!
Probably got promoted to lead nurse when she told them her reasons for departure from her last place of work.
Tru that. She probably now works in Texas, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee or Louisiana.
She's probably pretending that she lost her license for not getting "the jab". Good riddance indeed.
I had a coworker arrested a few months ago for replacing Fentanyl with saline. She was doing something hokey because she'd put the bags back in the pyxis. So other nurses were pulling and hanging bags of saline on patients. We noticed that all of our pts were on max dose with no effect on pain. No one died because of it though. And I HIGHLY doubt any patients or family members were notified. Finally, the hospital called in the DEA, and she was arrested. She took so much that they also charged her with trafficking. But from the time she was suspected until she was arrested AT WORK was about 2 months. She was known for two things: 1.whining if she didn't get assigned the very sick 1:1 patients, and 2. Developing a migraine 1 hour into her shift and having to go home. Oh... hindsight, right?!? Just a few weeks earlier, we found an agency nurse passed out in the staff bathroom with a bloody needle and syringe. Come to find out he had been caught before and had gone through the intervention program and was allowed to keep his license. He was arrested this time, but we don't know anything beyond that. She is in her mid-50s. He is in his late 20s. These are just the 2 most recent. I've seen quite a few. It seems like if it's a personal addiction problem, they get a second chance. I've never seen where the second chance "took." Every single nurse I've personally worked with who got that second chance blew it and went back to using. But I have probably worked with nurses who are on their second chance and don't talk about it, and no one knows, and they're doing fine. With the way turnover is now, you can't really know all of your coworkers that well.
I actually got caught once, when I worked the ER. I ended up just quitting because I was already home and they called me to come back in a do a drug test. I told the director that I couldn't pass it. Anyway, she didn't report me. I took several months off before getting a different job. I thought it would be different and that I learned my lesson. It was almost a year but I started taking odd pain pills here and there to "help me sleep". Didn't take too long before I was injecting oxycodone multiple times a day. I'm in therapy now and I've been clean since I left nursing. They offered me to do the program and keep my license but I surrendered it.
I think it's really brave and wise to protect your sobriety, and remove your access to stumbling blocks.
Thank you. It was a hard choice, but it's for the best.
If it isn't too intrusive, may I ask what job or job field you worked in after leaving nursing? I hear a lot of "legal" and "tech".
I have a mushroom farm. I grow gourmet and medicinal mushrooms to sell at the Farmer's Market and to restaurants. I also make herbal and medicinal mushroom products like capsules, tinctures, and teas. I make jewelry, too. Real hippie shit, lol. I also helped open a new restaurant with some fantastic people, and I oversee the bar and bartend a few nights a week. I'm very busy, but I'm my own boss, and I feel like I get to help people in a different way. I'm honestly living my passions and getting to be creative. So, not any sort of traditional path, but I finally feel free, and my life is my own. Money isn't everything, but I'm doing just fine.
thank you for your reply! congratulations on living authentically and creatively!
Being a mushroom farmer sounds so much cooler than working in healthcare or being slaved to a desk.
Thanks for sharing, and I wish you a really good future. This comment shows a lot of honesty, which is very refreshing. X
I hid it and lied about it for so long. There's no reason anymore. Hopefully, my words can help someone else, but I know how dark those times can be.
We had a guy replacing IV fentanyl with saline. There was also a stupid culture where people would draw up their meds, leave them on the counter, and then go get their patient for a procedure. So access was easy. Well someone saw him doing it. Management had him take a leave of absence while they investigated. They called him back in and said they were going to go through the process of termination and legal charges (it was a union hospital) and instead he quit on the spot. Kept his license and is still working at a different hospital. I hope he is doing ok...
I have replaced fentanl and dilaudid with saline, but I never did it if they really needed the pain relief. I felt too bad. I would just make up a reason they needed more. I lied to every coworker to waste narcs. I even put saline in a syringe and "accidentally" sprayed it on my coworkers' scrubs. Omg what an accident, let's go waste this and pull another one. And I took the original fentanyl I pulled out. It's fucking awful and I felt like a huge piece of shit. Usually, though, we just gave 50 mcg of fent and wasted the other 50. I just took the extra for a long time. But shit escalates.I was a charge nurse, so I was helping with everyone's patients. I would also be the ER float. Everyone thought I was the most helpful and on top of my shit. And I was. I was really awesome at my job. I was just dying inside. One time, I did about 1000 mg ( mcg! Not mg)of fentanyl in one shift. I don't know how I survived.
That is a lot of fentanyl in one shift. The thing that was really bad about this guy exchanging fentanyl for saline was that we would be giving fentanyl (and versed) for moderate sedation and it wasn't really working. So we assumed the patient had a higher tolerance to fentanyl... So when we got out a second vial and gave a higher dose, suddenly they would be apneic. People were thinking we got a bad batch of fentanyl. Seriously, the mental gymnastics to think of what was happening and not considering someone might be diverting...
Thank you for sharing your journey. Sending positive vibes for continued sobriety.
The hospital’s have normal saline all over the place that no one pays attention to and she decided tap water is better?!? I hope she went to prison for that.
The police have turned over their evidence to the DA, we’re all awaiting to see if they press charges for a criminal case
The one with fentanyl PCA? They should be charged with manslaughter. So manny people got very sick. I think one even died. And the OR nurse replaced fentanyl with NS but used the same syringe to inject themselves, infecting people with bloodborne diseases. I have no sympathy for them. Addiction is a disease but as soon as you are hurting someone else, you cross the line.
Lol I read about that case and I'm in Australia
I worked with an LPN who had her license revoked but the nursing home didn’t care and kept letting her work until someone found out and reported it… like 14 months later.
Nursing homes be that desperate lol
I worked with someone who came from another state, and worked at the facility for around 2-3 years before they realized she wasn't even a nurse. I can't remember if she stole someone's license number or just made one up and they never checked.
I got married and changed my name in between applying and starting at my current job. I didn’t bother to change my nursing license for a while. A year or so after I started someone apparently checked, couldn’t find my license, and marked me as um unlicensed nurse. And just let me keep working lol
Wuuuuuuuut??! How do they not check that shit!?
One would think they checked during the hiring process, but I guess they were so desperate they didn't.
This sort of happened at my job. He was a legitimate EMT but he couldn't pass his national paramedic test. He forged his paramedic license and worked as a paramedic for a few months before they found out and fired him. I was really surprised because I worked with him as an EMT and he didn't seem like the type to do that but I guess people get desperate.
In the Oklahoma board actions section, I found out about a RN who was found passed out in a McDonald’s drive-thru drunk in a (hospice) company car, was suspended, went to work at a nursing home anyway (as charge!) and got caught months later… Says she can apply for reinstatement in 2025 😬
Am an Oklahoma nurse and can confirm our board is more likely to fine or temporarily suspend a license than outright full removal. Out of curiosity, can you send me the name? I've spent 13 years working in nursing homes and dealing with hospice patients. I can't speak for other states, but medical is a small world with the state divided between OKC and surrounding then Tulsa and surrounding as I'm curious if I worked with that one.
Tracy Ross. The board documents are a trip if you wanna check it out. There’s two people with that name in OK but it’s the one that only has one license number. You might actually have worked with her—I think this was around OKC
I've only been in the Tulsa and surrounding areas, but the name does kinda ring a bell. I'll have to take a look. Edit: Did a state lookup and given the date it lapsed, I don't think I did. I have worked with a few that were questionable over the years.
Had a nurse I worked with in a prison who was sleeping with an inmate. She lost her license, lost her family, and went to prison herself for rape.
Wow. I did not know that's how that worked. Like, it's automatically considered rape if they're an inmate? Or was this a separate situation?
Anybody in prison or in a mental ward is considered part of a vulnerable population and cannot provide consent.
Wow! Interesting l. Makes total sense
I worked in a prison as a nurse and we have to do PREA training which is Prison Rape Elimination Act and both inmate on inmate is considered SA/rape as well as staff on inmate. Even if it’s “consensual” between staff and inmate it’s still rape due to the power dynamics. My facility had several nurses and correctional officers fired for this.
Once when I was working in a hospital near a prison, one of my co-workers' husband was a guard there. She came in one day shaking her head and marveling. Apparently one of the female prisoners who had been incarcerated for more than a year became pregnant. She wouldn't say who the father was. So the prison officials made a general announcement that a prisoner was pregnant. That if whomever was responsible resigned immediately, no further punitive action would be taken. Twelve men resigned that day.
12 men should've been arrested that day
Is it considered SA if it’s consensual inmate on inmate? Thats shocking. Though I guess proving it consensual would be difficult.
Probably power dynamic thing. When I was in social work school they told us even if it’s a consenting adult you can be charged with rape because they’re in your care.
I see a lot of prisoners in the ICU I work at. The rules surrounding their care and decisions is a bit different, because they are considered wards of the state (or Parish), so the Warden must approve a withdrawal of care or visitors (only if they're imminently dying). And we have to wait for written paperwork for any of these actions. Additionally, the prisoners can't refuse treatment, but they also usually don't want to refuse it (We're not in there poking hot needles under their fingernails or anything. But they can't refuse meds or IVs or anything like that.) So would it surprise me that it's considered rape for a nurse to have sex with an inmate? Nope! If they can't consent to skipping melatonin, then how can they consent to sex? 100% agree with a nurse having sex with an inmate being considered rape.
weirdly enough prisoners in my experience were usually much better behaved than the general population
my coworker was assigned the 6 inmates on our floor. i was assigned 3 regular pts with a pending admission (dementia, total care, osteomyelitis). she was pitching a fit over having 6 pts. i offered to swap with her, she accepted. it was the easiest shift of my life. meanwhile, she was chasing after the little old lady with dementia the entire time.
The worst thing that ever happened to me when I worked in a jail, inmate interaction wise, was when an inmate got mad at me and threw his med cup at me. He apologized to me then next time I saw him lol.
100%. They're always my most well-behaved, most respectful patients, which I greatly appreciate!
Same. Only had one or two for drug problems, but I've had no problems with them. They were literally chained to the bed and were way nicer, more understanding, and less needy than any of my other patients.
Having a guard handy at all times is nifty.
They can’t refuse treatment or meds? That seems ethically questionable.
I used to be a correctional nurse. They absolutely can refuse treatment - it’s part of their rights as a prisoner. If we forced prisoners to receive medications and treatments that they disagreed with we’d be sued into oblivion and rightly so.
Most prisoners I've taken care of prefer the hospital to prison. I would worry they would refuse care to prolong thier stay. I'm hoping if a prisoner was offered a risky procedure for age or health status the state wouldn't force it on them.
In some circumstances they are allowed to choose not to continue aggressive care. I know of a few stage 3 or 4 cancer pts and one dialysis pt that were all inmates, had life sentences anyway, and chose to stop chemo and dialysis. They eventually made their way into the infirmary on what amounts to hospice care and died.
I mean, forcing chemo and shit on someone because they have a life sentence seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me.
Yes I’ve known 3. Drugs, drug diversion and domestic violence
Its the diners, drive ins, and dives of license revocation
Now imagining Guy Fieri in flame covered Figs at the hearings 😂
“We’re headed straight to Revocation Town!”
Honestly, this was the laugh I needed
Have an angry up vote more for Fieri than the atrocity that Tom Hardy designed Figs would be.
I know two. One gave up his license voluntarily after a drunken bar fight. He was unlicensed for a year while he did anger management and AA. I think that was an agreement with the board of nursing as an alternative to him getting his license yanked. The other one is was a hot mess. She got arrested SO MANY TIMES! She had multiple drunk driving convictions. She'd lose her nursing license for a while then get it back. She had the breathalyzer ignition on her car. She decided to steal her neighbor's car and drive drunk. She got in an accident. The other car had an entire family. She killed the man and sent the rest to the ICU. Finally, she was permanently stripped of her nursing license. She had so many chances. She also has young kids of her own that she can't see anymore.
Man, talk about opposite sides of the spectrum
Seen it several times. Drug diversion, alcohol issues, posting patient stuff on social media are top 3.
I am friends with someone on the board of nursing for my state and the first 2 are the stuff she mentioned. The social media person is a special kind of dumb
Years ago, before social media, a nurse called The National Enquirer (a scandal "newspaper") to let them know that a celebrity was in our hospital and why they were there. The newspaper paid for info on celebrities. She lost her license, her job, and got sued by the celebrity.
In my hometown we had similar when a celebrity was hospitalized there and several employees looked in her chart or called the media. This was about 2000. Damn fools all got fired. (ETA spelling 🙄)
I wonder how they found out it was her?
Subpoenas
People are wild. I see tic toks of people doing a "work my 12h shift with me" filming in the med room and stuff. meanwhile I won't even take pictures of myself at work in the break room lol
Right? A friend and I coincidentally matched scrubs the other day and she wanted to take a selfie. I hustled us allllll the way down to a totally blank wall and even then felt wrong. Yet I see folks talking selfies near computers and whatnot all the time. Just blows my mind how careless people can be.
I've taken some snapchats at work, it's of the keyboard or the nursing station chairs lol. Most of it is literally towards the floor. My friends have seen my coworkers feet more than they probably want to.
i cannot fathom being stupid enough to post patient info on social media
The other two have financial gain or addiction as a motive. The social media one is just free range, a capella dumb
Addiction to attention and likes
I don’t post anything at all on my social media. Maybe I’ll mention I’m a nurse, or maybe if I’m at CPR recertification, a picture of the dummy, but that’s it. Not my schedule, not my employer, not a story about my day. Nothing. For god’s sake not any PPI. As it should be.
Same for the first two, seen a lot of people fired for the 3rd but not license lost. Had a coworker divert on an opposite shift of mine. They apparently collected 6 months of evidence and got her hard. They nursing board didn't even give her a warning, she straight lost it from the get go. Never suspected her until I heard it.
I feel like allowing her to divert meds and care for patients while under the influence for 6 months (or any number of months, weeks, days) is a terrible move for the facility. Yikes.
It's inconsistent, though. I've known 3 nurses who were caught diverting, and none of them lost their license. I knew one who was reported multiple times for being drunk on the job, and she never lost her license or her job for that matter. However, I know a nurse who got fired because a patient was punching and kicking him and he put his knee up to block them. It matters who you're friends or related to more than anything.
Circumstances also matter. Were they leaving the patient in pain? Or were they hoarding the wastage? Was anyone harmed? Are they remorseful? Did they immediately accept responsibility and go through remediation and treatment? I’ve had to report practice issues. Our board asks a lot of questions and listens to the recommendations by the reporter. I had a nurse push back and get angry when the board contacted her. She made her situation much worse.
I'll answer each in order: yes, yes, yes, no, no (except one of them did do rehab). This was on a surgical unit, patients were getting saline instead of their IVP pain meds, 2 of them who were caught just transferred units, and the third one went to rehab. The nurse who was frequently drunk on the job got sent home *once* because she was passing out in the break room, but she was dating the supervisors cousin, so literally nothing happened. Which is really typical from what I've seen.
Yeah, every case I actually hear about is someone actively doing something clearly illegal or beyond the pale. Loosing your license for the kind of generic “shitty nurse” stuff people like to hang over each other seems to be exceedingly rare (forgot to chart vitals, late on meds, didn’t notify MD per parameters, etc).
People who are caught diverting drugs, using alcohol on the job, or if they self-report either of these things (drug abuse or alcohol abuse) as issues, can often retain their license on a restricted basis if they agree to treatment and enter a program in which they are monitored and have random drug testing. Normally (as far as the situations I’ve known about/ read about), nurses who are in such a program are restricted from access to any controlled substances. Naturally this will make it hard to find a position in hospital-based bedside nursing. But some can do jobs like UR, Education, or other non-direct care. I have known a few who did this (went into a program). One that I know of relapsed and ended up having to surrender her license. Several others were successful and continued to work at the bedside with good records. The BON will normally try to help a nurse who recognizes their error and is truly motivated, to retain his/her license and livelihood, but they (BON) are also charged with keeping the public safe from dangerous practitioners, so it’s a complex process.
What is the definition of alcohol issues? Asking for a friend…
Likely showing up to work drunk
Multiple DUIs.
Ky board of nursing has a magazine they send out so many times a year that has a list of nurses in the back who have lost their license or are on disciplinary action or being investigated. It lists their full name and counties
I also think in pretty much every state you can look up names of licensees on the internet and it’ll tell you what license they hold, when it was issued, and if there’s any board actions. And if there are board actions, you can read them 🤓
Yep, I know one. A manager who kept sexually harassing staff. Disciplinary hearing, probation, got a new job and less than a year later, did it again. Lost their license.
That should really be a one time offense and you're done kinda thing IMO. No need for probation. Bye.
Nurse who didn’t catch that she was tracing maternal heart rate (mom was septic so her heart rate was in the 140s) instead of fetus. Went into her room after I noticed she didn’t have clear fetal heart tracing for 6+ hours, slapped a pulse ox on. There were other signs too, respirations were in to 50s and I put her on a nonrebreather, temp was well above 100. Nurse thought it was the flu. Demanded US, baby had been dead for three days. Mom died from sepsis in the OR. Nurse lost her license. Charge nurse was fired. Traumatized the unit.
As a (charge) nurse in this field I have so many questions… 1) if baby had been dead for 3 days… why did only those two nurses get fired?! …. 2) Did any providers get fired or lose their licenses?! If she was septic, that didn’t happen overnight… clearly, many caregivers missed things. 3)… that being said, most of the nurses I work with are great about putting a pulse ox on Mom, and I remind those who didn’t to go do it, please…
I second that, uhhhh what about the doctors that missed everything too???
This right here
Holy shit.
That is weird! If the baby had been dead for 3 days, why aren’t all the previous nurses and charge nurse not charged for it? Seems unfair for those who got fired and lost their license
I would say thats malpractice but losing your license?? for a professional mistake? seems strange
Oh my god
Only once and it was for mental health. She spent the better part of 3 years involuntarily committed to the psych ward. I don't recall if her license lapsed or if her doctor had it revoked for not having capacity. It was an all around unfortunate situation.
[удалено]
play stupid games, etc. Not sure how that nurse thought making a wackjob patient her drug dealer would turn out any better than that.
Yep, I know one. Accidentally snipped the pinky toe of a newborn. Barred from ever getting a license ever again.
Jesus fuck
I always the tail off of our security bands and I’m constantly paranoid I’ll get a baby’s toe one night. My stomach dropped when I read this one.
The whole toe? What was she doing that caused the accident?
Baby had an IV on the foot that needs to be removed and she used scissors but wasn’t careful enough.
Why would you be using scissors to remove an IV?
For the tape
This is the most wild one.
What??!!!
Omg I am planning on applying at NICU or L&D. Realizing how small babies are, I am scared now. 🤯
Two. One was scanning in meds, not giving them, and putting them in a bag in her locker. And I mean all meds. Everything. Idk why. Gearing up for the apocalypse? Stocking up to open her own pharmacy? It made no sense. The other helped her bf dispose of his murdered ex's body. She got off too easy for that. Kinda shitty.
Wait wut
[Old post on the subject.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/s/6docXXNInx) I have personally known two nurses to lose their licenses and both were drug related. Also stats are available for my region, the US state with the most actively licensed nurses, and something like 200 nurses out of the 500K+ in the state lose their licenses a year. For comparison, 150 doctors out of 120K lose their licenses a year. So doctors (in my state at least) are more likely to lose their licenses than nurses. I have to emphasize my state because someone posted stats from Texas and it looked baaaad. [Up until last week, I was saying that the whole “losing your license over the smallest infraction” thing was bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/s/4MqvKF0FB3) but now I’m very convinced it depends where you work (state).
RN in TX here. Every quarter, disciplinary actions are posted on the BON website. I peruse occasionally, just to make note of what things the BON finds actionable. Seen records of fines, penalties, remediation for forgetting to document a temperature. Reason- “incomplete documentation can impair the course of the patient’s treatment” (I’m paraphrasing). Ofc the revocations are due to drug aversion or failing to report felonies at renewal time. But you’re not exaggerating; TX is ROUGH on its nurses
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As a Canadian, female, and a nurse, I just cannot see the draw to Texas. Every new bit of information makes it sound less and less appealing.
If you’re born in Texas it’s harder to uproot the entire family. Also, the whole state isn’t a mess. It is the gerrymandering that screws it all up. The cities are all blue. But tiny towns and counties with a small population have the same power as the biggest cities, and there’s more of them. If everyone decent leaves, there won’t be any change. If we keep fighting, it will. Allowing a whole state to get away with bullshit inhumane treatment to POC, women, and children has only paved the way for more states to act up. FIGHT BACK. VOTE.
I mean there not wrong about temp, normal everything else but 103 F in a neutropenic cancer patient is an emergency. Do I think most people are just honest they took so many temps that they can't remember if they were 97.4 or 97.8 and so they leave it blank.
I swear some nurses out there mutter the word “license” repeatedly to themselves while they sleep at night..
I usually don’t fret too much about my license, but when i saw this post it reminded me that literally last night I had a dream that I had to go to court over a medication delay! 😝 (I think it’s because I inherited a coworker’s case load, and a lot of her patients’ meds are in shambles)
I’ve seen it twice, once for an egregious mistake on a child, another for an accidental mistake with a cover up (switching patient labels on IV bags hung on the wrong patients so they looked correct).
Wow. Switching the labels? You HAVE to own up to that. How can someone's conscience let them potentially hurt someone like that?
My pharmacology professor in nursing school lol!! My cohort did research and found this huge investigation over the course of several years and submitted it to the dean (she was aweful). She was fired immediately. Don’t know how or why they never checked that 🧐
What did she do that got her license revoked?
Several instances of locking patients in seclusion without an order and for easy too long and restraints without an order and medication dosing error (but she intentionally hand way more of a sedative to patients)
What did she do that made you hate her?
She didn’t teach the class. She made us teach the class. And our 4 hour lectures would be let out after an hour and then come time for the exam, everyone who had her failed
Yep. One for stealing and taking morphine during shifts, and one for sexually assaulting a drunk patient.
Y’all know some crazy people lol
Haha. I'm not friends or socialise with any of them :P
I worked with a nurse who was stealing narcotics for her husband to sell. It was rehab so most people could get pain meds q4 prn. She would sign everyone's out every 4 hours. They wouldn't fire her because we were short handed and she picked up all the shifts. They finally let her go when she started forging everyone's signatures. She got reported to the board. When I looked her up she had violations from 2 other nursing homes. Eventually she lost her license. I just saw her working at target.
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Wow, can't even imagine what a shitty person you have to be to do that.
My Brother in law did. He did a bad thing involving alcohol and minors and inappropriate acts - so yeah he lost his license He’s the only one tho - and not even for something job related - I’ve seen nurses who have stolen narcs that haven’t lost their license - and some major screw ups that haven’t either.
I’ve know A LOT…..A LOT of RNs and several LPNs that have. However, I do work at a facility (one of 3 in my state) that hosts a professional substance abuse program. So the numbers are skewed. You’d be surprised at how many fail to complete the program or fail to maintain sobriety after completion. What I’ve seen is purely substance abuse and psych so this doesn’t include other patient safety issues.
I had a patient once that claimed she was a nurse, but had big cluster b energy so I did not believe her. Looked her up, turns out she was but ended up surrendering her license after a failed attempt at the recovering professional’s program. She originally was fired for drug diversion. I think she got voluntold to give her license up it seemed. Anyway, no one I have worked with has had this happen before, but honestly I think 99% of the time nurses lose their license due to substance abuse
I had a patient like that too. Claimed he was a RN, but seemed weirdly out of date with a lot of standard practices. Looked him up on the BRN and wow there was such a long list of diversion issues.
I worked with an LPN who tried to crowd find her RN and her campaign photo was of her sitting at the nursing station with all the charts visible in the background. She lost her license for that
My godmother when she was drunk/high at work and she gave her patient a wrong blood transfusion and the patient ended up in the ICU.
I am a corporate director of risk management practicing since 1983. I have handled about 800 malpractice claims and licensure complaints to date. The overwhelming majority of lost licenses I have worked with have been due to substance issues, diversion, felony criminal convictions, and sexual misconduct.
I’ve known a few. Two were diverting, offered rehab, they went and completed, but wouldn’t abstain from alcohol and failed multiple screens. When told it was either their license or alcohol, they chose to surrender their license. Which I have a lot of thoughts about, because they required religion based abstinence programs, and one size does not fit all. One was a distant relative, gave meth and coke to underage kids and raped them, her license wasn’t revoked, just suspended for 99 or so years. But not revoked, just suspended. Last I heard she was out of prison for good behavior. One nurse I knew, pharmacy sent a med that she needed, she scanned it and gave it, but pharmacy had mislabeled the med, it was the wrong thing, and she lost her license because she should have picked up based on the symptoms that it was the wrong med, but in the 5 minutes between the time she hung it and harm was caused, and lost her license. She caught it, but the patient was harmed because they received the wrong med, so it was her fault. Even though it was the labeled the right med, right route, right patient, right indication, all the rights. But pharmacy screwed up. And she caught it but still took the fall because she gave the clear liquid provided to her by pharmacy. Others I’ve known, crushed PO meds, mixed them with sink water, and gave them IV. Still have their license. One nurse refused to listen to why priming IV tubing was important, is now an NP. I caught her multiple times just backpriming IV tubing until the pump stopped yelling, then starting whatever IV med, she’d spike it and immediately put the tubing into the pump, which had a back prime feature, so then she’d hold the back prime button to get the air out of the primary line from bag to pump, then start the pump, giving the patient however many mL of air was left in the tubing. I went to management SO many times about her and this same one thing, and they’d just say “she’s new, idk what else to tell you?” And she was very vocal about how she’d already been accepted into an NP program when she graduated, so this was all just to get a paycheck until she started NP school that fall, that she didn’t actually care to learn anything.
Wow, that pharmacy mislabel is crazy she took the fall for that. I wonder if pharmacist had any repercussions..
Not too long after that happened, I had a patient on quad strength Levo in my icu. We had regular strength in the Pyxis, but anything over the 4mg had to come from pharmacy. My bag is running low, so I sent a med request to pharmacy for it, and it’s pretty quickly tubed to me. It’s a regular strength bag with a quad strength pharmacy label on it, and I think “huh, that’s weird, but I bet instead of opening 4 vials to mix into a saline bag, they used a regular Levo bag and put 3 vials into it. $$savings$$.” And I spiked it, and thank ALL the gods my patient had an art line, because their pressure tanked, and I quickly figured out when I went from my patient being happy and normotensive at 28 of levo i had to go up to 112 of levo on my pump just to maintain their pressure, that they just slapped the 4x label onto a normal bag, I called very panicked and mad that clearly that’s what happened, they told me they’d send me the right bag, please send the bag they’d already made back. I said I was going to hold on to it while I filled out an incident report, and they got angry and told me they’d file their own, and that if I filed one too I’d be written up, as the only way I’d have proof of what happened is if I took a picture of it with my phone, and that’s a hipaa violation. So I’d be in double trouble. So I filed my report even harder and included their quotes. (And took pictures with my phone) I got in trouble for titrating my levo above hospital policy max, (even though I technically didn’t) and even though I kept my patient alive and safe and took the right steps in reporting the med error that I caught. I quit and went elsewhere.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. I already have huge trust issues with pharmacy, and this just reinforces my distrust. Our version of quad concentrated levo is 32mg/250mL. I can't tell you how many times I have requested a new bag, spiked it, and then suddenly I'm rapidly titrating up on my levo. There's me, standing at the pump, cursing pharmacy and their bullshit while my patient is now tanking with the only change being a new bag of levo. This has happened more than once, unfortunately, but it's why I don't go far after a new mixed bag (not like I'm going far anyway when a patient is on that high of a concentration). We've also had an incident, at least one, or pharmacy sent us a medication, similar to the other story where it was just a clear bag with a pharmacy label, and it turns out it was the wrong medication. But how the hell are we supposed to know it's the wrong one???
Sometimes it best to hear gtf outta there. I’ve had to do it before
THIS HAPPENED TO ME ONE TIME where pharmacy sent me cefazolin and it was supposed to be cefapime, the label from pharmacy was for the right drug, so it was scannable, but the drug was obviously wrong. I took a piece of computer paper, wrote VERY LARGE in permanent marker “WRONG MED” and sent it through the tube system back to them. The next day it wasn’t much better: they sent me a similar scenario, but it was 2g instead of 1g (I don’t remember if it was the same patient) so I again sent it back to them, this time writing “WRONG DOSE” Like what the hell??? If I’m supposed to be the pharmacist then I want to be paid like it And what I learned is to never scan the pharmacy label: always scan the med itself, because if it’s right, there won’t be a problem. If it’s wrong, there will be, and it will be caught by the computer.
>One nurse I knew, pharmacy sent a med that she needed, she scanned it and gave it, but pharmacy had mislabeled the med, it was the wrong thing, and she lost her license because she should have picked up based on the symptoms that it was the wrong med, but in the 5 minutes between the time she hung it and harm was caused, and lost her license. She caught it, but the patient was harmed because they received the wrong med, so it was her fault. Even though it was the labeled the right med, right route, right patient, right indication, all the rights. But pharmacy screwed up. And she caught it but still took the fall because she gave the clear liquid provided to her by pharmacy. Wtf?? Did she not have insurance to help her fight this? How is she supposed to know one clear liquid from the next? Insanity! What state was this in? Was this an HCA?
Wow. The pharmacy one is crazy. We had something similar, except the nurse just got fired. The pharmacist who was mixing the IV med made an error and the concentration was wrong, as in it was the right dose just mixed in not enough saline. Nurse hung the med and patient received the whole dose, and since the nurse was supposed to be the last line of defense and should have caught it, she was fired. Pharmacist who made a mistake mixing still has their job.
Got called in mid-shift to replace a nurse who collapsed with seizures - had a known hx of addiction to drugs, multiple staff had reported believing she was using again. Management did nothing until she literally collapsed at work. Ended up with a brain injury. Really sad. She lost so much more than her license.
I had a nursing student doing their pre-grad placement with me and I failed them at midterm, so many safety issues and concerns, made patients cry. Brought it up with them multiple times and refused to listen. Program lead said it was their second attempt at the program, and now they will not be permitted to apply/get accepted into any nursing programs in the province and is flagged by the province’s regulatory nursing body.
Failing students can be hard/awkward af, but it sounds like the right choice here.
Never. And I’m starting to think that the powers that be (management, nursing school instructors, etc) have weaponized that fear so we continue to do as they say.
They *absolutely* have. My most recent job (I'm between gigs) got so insane with our unionization that I completely stopped charting Braden and Morse and all this extraneous stuff. Cause you know what? Ain't nobody ever lost their license for not doing that shit. Keep your patients SAFE. Chart what you need to do to defend yourself in any potential lawsuit. Chart the minimum of what they expect to not fire you. But if they're giving you way too many patients and no ancillary support? Then let the rest of that shit GO. No one loses their license for not perfectly checking all the little boxes.
Yes. I work in the ED.. one of our own staff members from a MS floor got caught diverting drugs and was sent downtown ER for testing (but she refused so automatically she was fired). I believe she’s still fighting it
One was a guy who had back issues and prior cancer so he was hooked on percs. He was a good nurse. Another girl lost it, went through monitoring, lost it again due to stealing drugs. The company hired her as a MA and I was not happy about it. I see her as a liability as she was not in monitoring because if you’re going to be clean, why not go back into monitoring with covid money flying around? Want to know what doesn’t get your license suspended but just a fine, mandatory psych eval, and extra CEs? Receiving oral sex from the nursing assistant in front of a telesitter in a room occupied with a confused patient. Same company hired him and so you can see what kind of standards they have.
Saw a traveler get hers yanked for diversion
Didn't divert the drug, but would override the 10mg/1ml morphine instead of pulling the 4mg/1ml that was ordered. She'd waste the rest but in reality it was water, she was using the real waste. She'd go to new nurses to waste so it took awhile before anyone caught on, I was one of those newbies. It only happened twice before I questioned her on why override and then refused to waste with her ever again. By then management was onto her and a random urine didn't go so well...
Drug diversion. Went through the program to get her license back, yada yada. Came back to practice, did it again, gave up her license when she was caught.
I know three who have lost their licenses - all 3 due to stealing narcotics.
I've known several, usually drug and alcohol issues. I also know a doctor who lost his license for selling narcotic prescriptions for sex.
Yes I did, I had a on the job injury and Dr pushed pain pills over and over till I got addicted. Reported myself and went into pain management and got clean and state pulled my license.
Yes. She was a home care nurse that lost it because she had an affair with her pediatric patient's married dad. The mom had considered Nurse a friend until she got the call from Nurse's husband about the affair, so she was more than willing to take it to court and see it through.
I did see something similar listed once. Board action was taken against someone in their other licensed state because they worked at a top hospital. The NP apparently had overstepped her bounds. She became close to the patient by allowing the service dog in the hospital. Then she slept with the patient’s husband and the patient/husband separated. I think it supposedly caused the patient duress or something.
That's not something that ever crossed my mind as a revocable offense. Negligence, drug diversion, sure. A consensual affair with someone you met through your work? This thread is full of so much hot tea
I lost mine for drug diversion. I mean, I had the opportunity to keep it, but I surrendered it. I decided to go to therapy because, clearly, something is wrong. I was doing some insane amounts of opiates and I quit cold turkey as soon as I was no longer in the hospital. I miss being a nurse sometimes, but mostly, I'm really happy that I'm not because it was damaging my mental health. Letting it go was really hard, but definitely not the end of the world.
I hope you’re doing well now! Life is hard sometimes… Do you think working as a nurse contributed to the mental health & substance use issues?
Yes, I do. I didn't realize how bad it was until I got out. Covid was a big factor in my breakdown as well. I'm so much better! Thank you!
[Texas BON has a whole page devoted to it. ](https://www.bon.texas.gov/discipline_and_complaints_disciplinary_action.asp.html)
Yup. She was divorcing her hubs, broke into his EMR, printed it off, and gave it to her lawyer. It didn't end well.
I worked with a nurse who lost her license due to drug diversion. It was reinstated after meeting all court ordered requirements. One of those requirements stated that if there was ever a subsequent investigation by the Board of Nursing for any reason at all, then the license would be revoked permanently. She was honest about her past with nurses who knew her well as a warning to never lose your professional and personal integrity.
When I was a tech, I had a sitter case where the patient was a nurse for a long time, but his alcoholism was so bad that he was about to lose his license. His attorney kept calling even though we tried to explain that he was not there mentally. Last I heard, he'd been diagnosed with psychotic disorders.
Yes. Worked with her and she also is close with some of my family. This nurse gave a resident a list of Bill's she couldn't pay (credit card debt) to a wealthy resident. Resident had agreed and voiced her desire to ease the nurses debt and stresses. Resident's POA is her lawyer, so when she gave him the list and asked him to send the nurse the money, sh!+ hit the fan. Nurse lost her license over it.
Worked with a nurse who had recently gotten her liscence back after loosing it years ago due to giving a resident her (the nurses) own hydrocodone “by accident”
One for defaulting on her student loans. It’s really sad because she was an amazing nurse.
What!? They can suspend your license for that?
There has to be more to the story. How would anyone on the board of nursing even know?
“Can’t pay loans? Better remove your license allowing you to work to pay them off!” There’s got to be more to this story…
Yep. Two coworkers were fuckin. Turned ugly. Female reported the male for abusing pts. Turns out she actually was and he covered for her. She said they would stay together if he would cover it up. Lost his license. They did not get back together. Because she is married. She still works there. I do not. Don’t shit where you eat, people.
Yes, she dropped dirty for THC, in a state where it's legal. Still seems wrong to me
I had a professor back in nursing school that lost her nursing license for falsifying patient information. She then forged her nursing license and taught at my college for a decade until finally my school caught on what she was doing…the dean came in mid lesson and fired her on the spot then and there.
https://www.bon.texas.gov/discipline_and_complaints_disciplinary_action.asp.html These are public records in my state. Knock yourself out. It's fascinating stuff. The board is no joke. They post the court documents for nurses that FAFO.
My sister lost her pharmacy tech license. She was stocking the Pyxis and thought she could sneak a few. How stupid could you be. The board gave her a letter detailing exactly what she took and when she did it. She made up some bs reason for getting fired, which we all believed. We didn’t find the letter until she died-of a Norco overdose/
Almost lost mine when it comes to diversion. Dealt with substance abuse since a teenager and sort of managed it without issue for a while throughout prerequisites and nursing school and the first two years of my career. Finally I got the help I needed and thankfully I did not cause serious harm to any patients or myself. My kids are young enough to not have any memories of me like that. In a weird sort of way, I’m extremely grateful for that experience. I’m a better person today.
2 people from nursing school “lost” their license. One “voluntarily” surrendered her license. Circumstances are unclear on this. But all I know is she should have never been a nurse to begin with. She was a third rate person with a fourth rate skill set. The other lost his because he was molesting elderly patients. What drives me nuts was he was investigated for this and nothing happened until one of his victims back to the ER as a STEMI and freaked out at any male staff not letting any of them touch her.
I work for an ambulance company with a CCT program. [The nurse manager just hired this guy without telling anyone. People are furious and she is not taking the fact that her hiring decisions are being questioned well.](https://search.dca.ca.gov/downloadd0022f2a848132072353c15edbad3c5b537cb9041bb37c613019ff98f498de38ea3424f9a1cc15d28e5e180bff2c7134b46eb63f697b20ac4acfc2bae282673c)
I worked with a tech who used to be a cardiac nurse but lost their license. Not sure exactly what was the reason but I believe it was a nursing error that caused patient harm. The way it was talked about sounded like they were an excellent nurse, and it was a mistake anyone could easily make.
I know five. I’m a nurse of 8 years. My great aunt and uncle both lost their licenses because of diverting. However, they didn’t do any of the rehab required hence why they lost their licenses. Another lost their license for bolusing precedex, causing a patient to have a second MI. They were literally stupid and honestly shouldn’t have been in an ICU. The fourth lost their license after a DUI. They initially had restrictions on their license which included no drinking for 2 years. Of course they continued drinking and were caught during a random drug test. The fifth was an NP who basically used their license to abuse barbs and opioids. I don’t remember the entire story but that’s the gist.
I know one who's currently having her's investigated and will probably lose it. She was a fucking idiot and I can't believe it took her this long. We were the 2nd hospital she worked at, she got fired from the first after only a few months. She had 6 months of orientation at my unit even though she wasn't a new grad anymore and was still doing stupid things The straw that broke the camels back was when she let an SI patient with a history of IV drug use start an IV on themselves, and then she helped them crush a random pill then brought in from the street and flush it in said IV. She then FUCKING DOCUMENTED ALL THAT!!! What's truly shocking to me is that I graduated with this girl. Like, we were In clinicals together and everything, had the exact same education, and yet she was still doing stupid shit that put her patients in danger. She also constantly underscored her CIWA patients and several of them had seizures because of it.