Impaired Healthcare Professionals

You discover that another nurse on your hospital unit has taken Valium from a client's medication supply - you confront her and she says "i'm under a lot of stress - I'll never do it again please don't tell the nurse manager"

• Working at night or rotating shifts
• Critical care assignments
• Excessive overtime
• Musculoskeletal injuries and pain
• Knowledge of medications
• ER nurses?

• Patient danger
• Guilt
• Disbelief
• Avoid conflict
• Feel sorry for the impaired person and don't want to get them in trouble
• The person may exert power over the nurse who should report it.

• Poor work performance
• Frequent absenteeism
• Unusual behavior
• Slurred speech
• Isolation from peers

• Incorrect drug counts
• Excessive reports of narcotics that were wasted or contaminated
• Damaged or torn packaging for narcotics
• "Pharmacy error" reports are numerous
• Volunteer often to pick up controlled substances from pharmacy

• Unexplained absences from unit
• Trips to the bathroom correlate with administration of drugs
• Early arrivals - late departures volunteer to work extra shifts

• Bipolar
• Schizo
• Personality disorders - borderline and antisocial

Criminal background checks became mandatory Sept 1st, 2004. A study looking at data concerning this found:

• There were 1508 nurses disciplined from 2002-2006
• 28% of the crimes were felonies
• In the two year period after the CBC became mandatory there was a 638% increase discovered among practicing nurses who failed to disclose their criminal histories.