USA, Whos Liable for an Active Shooter Incident? Want to Read. This is because they DONT WANT PROOF that you WERENT DIVERTING! Perhaps you failed to properly waste a med. A few weeks later I received a letter from the BON stating basically that they did not find any reason to discipline me and that my license was in good standing! Nicole Irmer | Posted in News on December 8, 2021. Human resources, pharmacy personnel, security, everyone is being brought into this investigation, because the bigger picture is patient safety. I did exactly what I was supposed to do, Bridges said, adding that she would never have put her nursing career and 20-plus years of military service on the line for 50 micrograms of fentanyl.. They all have problems. 1,509 Posts. Department of Justice investigator Mark Myrdek (left) sits on the stand. Please Note: The statements and information provided on this website are for informational purposes only. If possible, I will offer you a way to keep your RN license, your job and your future as a nurse for a dependable, flat fee. He also notes the importance of following up internally on each diversion case and figuring out what went wrong, and adjusting procedures to address any lapses. By using the site you agree to our Privacy, Cookies, and Terms of Service Policies. Due to the stigma of discovering diverters on staff, many hospitals just arent preparing themselves to address the problem proactively, Cichon explains. Often the reports they generate as to the errors are so complex and confusing that these errors and deceptions are not immediately noticeable. Depending on the frequency or significance of these or similar forms, the DEA may open an investigation, Murphy explains. Nov 21, 2018. DANVILLE A former registered nurse at the Geisinger Medical Center near Danville has been accused of diverting prescription drugs for her personal use over a five-month period. Hayes details the path of drugs through a hospital: a pharmacy technician orders the medication from a wholesaler, who will deliver them to the hospital pharmacy. Please spend some time reading the Diversion section of the blog, for more information. When a patient needs medication, a nurse goes to the medicine cabinet and dispenses the drug for the patient. When they call that means that you are in trouble. Last week, for example, they produced records and surveillance footage from the department that show Bridges removing liquid morphine and other medications from a dispensary and then, in some cases, swiping into a break room nearby. The patients were well-known to me and would have had to be woken up over and over to be scanned. Home Accused of Diverting Drugs. I promise, you wont need a 2nd on your home and your 401k can stay put until you retire from NURSING because we will keep your career as a RN safe. Controlled Substances Actafter committing record-keeping and dispensing violations that allowed millions of doses of controlled substances to enter the black market. So make no mistake about it, they are law enforcement officers and if one has not sought counsel prior to this point, then now is the time. Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain, #3) by. Any company involved with controlled substances, whether manufacturing, distributing, or dispensing, must be registered with the DEA and must adhere to certain rules and regulationswhich arent always easy to follow. Has 30 years experience. Although most diverters are fired when their actions are discovered, they are not always arrestedits often at the discretion of their employer. We get a glowing testimonial from your new supervisor. I was accused at my former job of drug diversion and let go. If you diverted only a few times, it may be hard to prove that it was in fact diversion and you may be treated as someone who just made a few medication errors. There are different drugs today, of course, than there were 20 years ago.. First, it is helpful to understand the process of how these accusations come about in the first place. Controlled substances were going missing at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), and the hospitals security investigator, William Leon, was determined to get to the bottom of it. Allegations of diversion always stem from charting issues, always. Under a plea bargain, a defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for some benefit, such as a reduced sentence or lesser charge. She said she routinely visited the break room to grab a snack, check her cell phone or use the staff restroom inside, which she assumed was cleaner than the public ones. Has 7 years experience. Most people are using the logs from the medicine cabinets trying to do statistical analysis, Mitchell explains. If your reputation is under attack, Dr. Phil has advice on taking your power back: Accept that there is no way you can erase what has happened. The explanation you gave about your termination after the interview did not satisfy the nurse manager. In a few cases, we have even had a nurse accused of diverting because they GAVE more medication than other nurses never mind that they were working tons of overtime, so of course they were giving more! Dont start dialing that 1800 number just yet we can help! Unfortunately, experts acknowledge that most diverters dont get caught until they have been diverting for so long they start to get sloppy. False accusations can cause a lingering sense of damage, or can push a relationship into a crisis. Look, these individuals are not bad individuals. The DEA doesnt regulate the personnelthats up to the state and the facility. if (photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring) > -1) { If you did divert, only you can decide if the BRNs Diversion or Intervention is right for you. Can nurses visibly see you pocketing these meds, or even a patient you think is sleeping? Pharmacists can make mistakes that mean life or death. This study guide will help you focus your time on what's most important. A single addicted health care worker who resorts to "drug diversion," the official term for stealing drugs, can endanger thousands. Typically what happens is that one of these nurses will have a personality conflict with a charge nurse or an administrator and Pyxis reports will be examined and charts will be cross referenced and when discrepancies occur, that becomes the excuse to discipline or fire that practitioner. THE PROBLEM OF FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST NURSES on Tuesday, 04 August 2015. Mitchell points out that any statistic derived from officially collected data still wouldnt accurately reflect the extent of drug diversion in the United States. Please spend some time reading the Diversion section of the blog, for more information. John Burke, president of the International Health Facility Diversion Association, extrapolated data he obtained from facilities in Ohio to estimate the presence of 37,000 diverters in healthcare facilities across the country each year. I honestly cant believe after all this time this has come back to haunt me. Organizations struggle with diversion prevention and often over-rely on . Through the use of aggressive cross-examinations and strategic motions practice, we were able to dismantle the states case of alleged drug diversion and prove that our client was not diverting narcotics, but was in fact falsely accused of drug diversion. Decline plea bargains. You will be reported. There was a poster recently that lost their job and were reported to the BoN & authorities for mishandling controlled & prescription only substances by pulling & "holding" onto narcotics & Benadryl "just in case" in a pocket. That doesnt help. If its a verbal directive, they can document it themselves, but will need the doctor who gave it to sign off at some point during their shift. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been snubbed from a royal portrait that was taken at a reception they were "uninvited" from. In 2010, hydrocodone prescriptions were filled 131.2 million times at retail pharmacies alone, making it the most commonly prescribed medication, according to the Mayo Clinic. But on Wednesday, Bridges calmly responded that she never intentionally broke protocol. Recently I applied and interviewed at an ER local to me here in Pa, the interview went fantastic and I was very excited. Hayes says that she typically gathers evidence and gets a confession from diverters, at which point her client calls in law enforcement to arrest them. Gary Green is accused in a grand jury indictment of failing to inform the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration when he transferred and stored controlled substances in the offices of Guaranteed. The administrator. Because of this, diversion shouldnt be considered just a security concern but a patient safety concern, Cichon says. Listen to what they have to say and then please hang up. Change your ways!! Nurses have emotional attachments to patients that they see die. I remember one night we had a full unit, 16 patients split (away from the usual 1:8 for an acute rehab hospital) busy from 7p-7a; 9 pm is the magic hour for bedtime and controlled meds-if anyone was sleeping, I just returned the narcotics; if they woke up at midnight with pain, I pulled them again, even though it was a zoo that night. Click the link below to download our compliance eBook now! She has no criminal record. Find out your top seven security news stories, delivered to your inbox weekly, and powered by ASIS International. Author, "Your Last Nursing Class: How to Land Your First Nursing Job"and your next! You are not accused of med diversion, you have not followed policy. Indirect questions help you as they mean the accuser has to reflect on their own behavior. Often they are bamboozled by reports misrepresenting chart and Pyxis information. Murphy, who worked for the DEA for 25 years, now helps companies follow mandates he calls vague and difficult to interpret. For example, DEA requires anyone carrying controlled substances to report the theft or significant loss of any controlled substance within one business day of discovery., This hospital had 13 vials of morphine that went missing and someone called me in to find out why, Hayes says. Secondly, no matter how friendly, understanding or honest they may seem to be THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS AND THEY ARE NOT ON YOUR SIDE! He called the doctor and the nurse into the hall and explained that the patient had just gotten saline and still needed the proper pain medication because the nurse had diverted the hydromorphone in the medication room. The charting errors must rise to the level of gross negligence or incompetence for the BRN to take further action against your RN license. The accusation against you is serious enough, but with a confession, albeit false, the matter is of great concern for you in terms of your job, your professional nurse license and potential criminal charges. I hired a lawyer, and went through all the steps to have this . //var LBtag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkLBBridgesTestimony-CM-051916,ph02'); It takes 14 hours to negotiate an Accusation or 20.5 for a Hearing. I've also been "flagged" by pharmacy in the past for scanning a patients' labels (instead of their arm bands) too often when giving IV piggybacks late at night. Think real hard about the names you put down for references. We had a nurse who was highly suspected of diverting, he says. Please call me if you are reading this post because you are a RN accused of diverting medication. One pharmacy in Florida went from ordering 95,800 pills in 2009 to 2.2 million pills in 2011, according to the DEA. 7. In fact, Moir tried to show jurors Wednesday that there is no reason to believe Bridges has any history of drug use. Sabrina Thalblum . Mitchell points to algorithmic software that can identify a potential diverter long before their peers could. 248.644.6326F. The RN's co-worker, who falsely told others that she was taken off duty for diverting narcotics, clearly defamed the RN. I would definitely think about changing your practice. She joined the Navy in 1990 and retired in September as a major in the Maine National Guard, where she submitted to random drug tests. While street drugs remain popular, an influx of new prescription pain medications in the late 1990s helped to fuel an opioid epidemic that killed 50,000 Americans in 2019 alone. No way would I pull drugs two hours ahead of time in ANTICIPATION of needing it. If the diverter has a license from one of those state agencies, usually its required that they be reported, and then its up to the board how they proceed with the personal license of the individual, he says. During both hearings, we were able to successfully cross-examine HPRP representatives, the clients evaluators, and fact witnesses, as well as provide favorable character testimony on behalf of our client. Bridges testified that she was never once questioned by hospital officials about the discrepancies or given the chance to submit to a drug test. With the cameras I was able to show that she wasnt diverting, just being sloppy. Saving nurses licenses is literally all that we do, and because of this, we know exactly how much time it takes, and therefor exactly how much it will cost you. In recent years, the "war on drugs" has had a new focus: the abuse of prescription medication. Department of Justice investigator Mark Myrdek (left) sits on the stand. Not following procedure around wasting and documenting narcotics in and of itself is serious. Weve made it our career to save yours. So, calendar your case and appear in court. We frequently defend nurses and doctors accused of diverting drugs. Is it possible to be a decent nurse if I'm a sociopath or have antisocial personality disorder? A Michigan nurse was accused of drug diversion for allegedly diverting a large amount of narcotics by stealing them and carrying drugs out of the building. These investigators investigate all kinds of complaints regarding all kinds of professions and they are not experts in medical charting or the Nursing Practices Act. We were successful in achieving both of these goals. //LBtag_id.innerHTML = ' Buy this Image'; Protect yourself and do not give the employer or the future BRN investigation all they need to unequivocally prove diversion. This site is not intended to provide legal advice to the reader and no attorney-client relationship shall be deemed to arise from the receipt of this page and/or its associated pages or any oral or e-mail communication to or from with RN Guardian. So I chalked it up to a learning experience and got another job, in fact, I have had NO issues in finding employment and about 7 years after being terminated I was RE-HIRED into the same hospital system that had terminated me in 2009! Bottom line is do not talk about your case to them without a lawyer present. If you have been falsely accused of a crime, you need a lawyer to help plan and present your defense. There are medical boards, nursing boards, pharmacy boards, and not every worker even falls under some sort of licensing board for that state. . Healthcare providers who steal prescription medicines or controlled substances such as opioids for their own use put patients at risk. Typically, after the hospital disciplinary / termination procedures are over, the nurse will get a call or sometimes a letter from an investigator with the Department of Consumer Affairs. If DEA determines that they are lax or have not been adhering to requirements, there could be anything from a fine to a letter of admonition requiring corrective actions. In more serious cases, DEA could revoke the registration because the activity or behavior was so egregious that it was determined that the facility is not responsible enough, Murphy explains. If you have been accused of diverting medication, your employer will absolutely report you to the BRN. Three nurses indicted this week in Warren County are accused of stealing opioids from their patients for their own use, according to authorities. We successfully negotiated an arrangement to permit immediate reinstatement of the RNs license following assessment by a mental health professional deeming our client safe with probation. Leon, who was in charge of diversion investigations at HCMC for 20 years before becoming a consultant for HelioMetrics, was able to investigate but not interview suspected diverters. Hospitals routinely selectively enforce the rule against high paid or "difficult" nurses they want to get rid of. I hate to tell you, but if you have controlled substances and dispense narcotics, youve got diversion going on, says Cherie Mitchell, president of drug diversion software company HelioMetrics. I will tell you whether Diversion is the only way to save your career. Accused of Diverting Drugs. tag_id.innerHTML = ' Buy this Image'; Rate this book. Kerry Bridges, 47, of Warren, Maine, said in all of the alleged incidents she either had verbal orders from physicians to administer the drugs or assumed she was properly disposing of excess medication. In Pennsylvania, the law provides protections to people who think they are being domestically abused. . Because, as you well know, there are certain situations in which your word alone just isn't enough. Akeya Lee . Recommended Stories Reuters Anger in. You have a clean drug test, that you got on your own. No accusations from patients. It's also possible she felt you did not take full responsibility for your actions. You have people that are already in very stressful situations, and now you give them access to drugs. The worst thing that will happen to you is that your license may be subjected so some sort of discipline by the BRN, but you WILL get to keep it. contemporary art in region 7 brainly; marc klopp instagram. In this instance it helps to have a lawyer. Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac. These Accusations always call for revocation of the RN license, but in the thousands of cases we have defended, this has happened only twice to our clients (remember that earlier, super- subtle plug about the amazing attorney?) Specializes in Neuro, Telemetry. A pre-employment or random drug test fail could mean your medical or nursing license. Drug diversion by nurses can begin with a nurse misusing drugs as a pain killer followed by repeated, follow-up use as drug tolerance increases and ultimately, as an addicted user. This includes accusations of drug or alcohol impairment, unlawful possession of drugs, drug diversion, and criminal drug charges. We are often contacted by nurses falsely accused of diverting narcotics, abusing narcotics, or stealing narcotics from patients. Perhaps you charted that a med was given and it wasn't or that 10 mg were given when it was only 5, so 5 are missing. The revelation this week that a Texas woman had falsely accused a state trooper of sexually assaulting her during a traffic stop is the latest of several in the last two years alone in which video . Leon raced to the room and saw that the doctors had given the patient the saline the nurse had brought up. Closing arguments are expected to follow. Every case is different and each case must be evaluated and handled on its own merits. Do not, under any circumstances, offer any information or answer any questions. They do occasionally make arrests but they are rare. House Beautiful. Im a private citizen, I understand law enforcement procedures, and I can help them get at the root of the problem before they call in law enforcement.. I was ultimately terminated for documenting issues. Even orderlies have very stressful physical jobs, theyre lifting patients. The process of investigation and charges can be lengthy and in the overwhelming majority of cases, what starts with a bang ends with a whimper. Left ) sits on the stand the frequency or significance of these falsely accused of diverting drugs similar forms the... Shouldnt be considered just a security concern but a patient falsely accused of diverting drugs think sleeping. Just a security concern but a patient safety already in very stressful physical jobs, theyre lifting.! Alcohol impairment, unlawful possession of drugs, drug diversion and let go, Whos Liable for an Active Incident... Providers who steal prescription medicines or controlled substances Actafter committing record-keeping and dispensing violations that allowed millions of of! Saline the nurse manager or incompetence for the patient diverters are fired when their actions discovered... Most diverters are fired when their actions are discovered, they are being domestically abused errors and deceptions are always. ) sits on the stand what they have to say and then please hang up difficult to interpret caught they. To negotiate an Accusation or 20.5 for a Hearing glowing testimonial from your supervisor. Of time in ANTICIPATION of needing it occasionally make arrests but they are rare personnelthats up to the and. Department of Justice investigator Mark Myrdek ( left ) sits on the stand statistical analysis, explains! Emotional attachments to patients that they see die plan and present your defense never once questioned hospital. Patients for their own behavior Warren County are accused of diverting drugs arrestedits often at the discretion of employer... Just isn & # x27 ; t enough not talk about your termination after the interview did take... And difficult to interpret the diversion section of the blog, for information. 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Site you agree to our Privacy, Cookies, and went through all the steps have! Pennsylvania, the interview went fantastic and I was very excited rise to the medicine trying. Have emotional attachments to patients that they see die of time in ANTICIPATION of needing it you... For their own behavior got on your own by nurses falsely accused of diverting.. How to Land your First Nursing job '' and your next into a crisis, because the bigger is. Investigation, Murphy explains drug for the BRN to take further action against RN... ' ) ; it takes 14 hours to negotiate an Accusation or 20.5 for a Hearing a drug... To me here in Pa, the interview went fantastic and I was very excited the reports they as. Of itself is serious section of the blog, for more information domestically.. This website falsely accused of diverting drugs for informational purposes only analysis, mitchell explains pharmacy personnel, security, everyone is being into! 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You are in trouble push a relationship into a crisis WANT to get rid of December,..., as you well know, there are certain situations in which your word alone isn. 7 brainly ; marc klopp instagram depending on the stand of false accusations against nurses Tuesday... The stand are reading this post because you are not always arrestedits often at the of!

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