There probably is no one in the country who has not heard the phrase “Anything you say can and will be used against you.”  I’ve been familiar with that saying seemingly forever.  I always thought that referred only to criminal matters but apparently it now applies to nursing as well. I have had cases where a nurse jested with an off the cuff remark about something at work.  Whether or not it was made as humor, employers seem to be taking these quips seriously resulting in the nurses being … [Read more...]

Recently, an article in The Atlanta Journal Constitution detailed how the Georgia Board of Nursing secretly handles more than half of its disciplinary cases.  What I gather from the article is that nurses who are put into a monitoring program, as long as they are compliant, will have not have discipline against their license. The article pointed out that in 2017, the Board has 333 new disciplinary orders.  Of that number, 54% were private with just under half of that group being alcohol or … [Read more...]

On April 12th of this year, Christann Shyvin Gainey, L.P.N., was caring for a patient named H.R. McMaster, Sr. who was recovering from a stroke in a Pennsylvania facility.  During her shift and unwitnessed, Mr. McMaster fell and nurse Gainey was seen on surveillance video failing to perform neuro checks thereafter as required by the facility’s policy.  Mr. McMaster was found dead sitting in the lobby of the facility.  He suffered blunt trauma to the head from an unwitnessed fall and developed a … [Read more...]