04-05-2011, 09:52 AM
I live in Ohio & worked in the medical field for 13 years. I was a STNA (the shit at the bottom of the barrel if you will 
) I've seen too many instances of nurses abusing drugs & alcohol ON the job.
I worked with one nurse who had a case of beer in his locker, well half of it was gone when they cut the lock off of his locker. I worked with another nurse who left their shift without counting meds. They called him immediatly to come back & count, he never showed up. That night they contacted his father & asked him to go to his house to look for him. His father found him dead inside of his front door of a drug overdose. I had another nurse who was stealing morphine. Replacing the morphine with water. Countless other nurses who always seemed high to us but nothing was ever done about it. I worked under a nursing supervisor who was not allowed to have keys to the narc drawer because he was a alcoholic. When a nurse would call off & he had to cover their shift, he would have to have another nurse come pass his narcs for him. My ex graduated about a year ago, he's a RN now. At the end of our relationship I discovered that he was a closet pill popper, so add another one to the list.
I don't understand why someone would go through all of those years of school only to lose it all to addiction. Anyone who has studied the meds & all nurses have, know how highly addictive a lot of these drugs are. What's especially sad is that they are stealing these meds that the patients really do need for pain & replacing them with pills like tylenol. This is especially prevelant in nursing homes where the majority of patients have impairments. They can't see or hear well, or they have dementia or alzheimers so they don't realize they aren't getting the meds they are suppose to be getting & when they complain of pain after they're given their meds, the nurses tell them they have to wait hours because they've already gotten their meds when in reality, they were given a tylenol for their broken hip.
The nurses license should be pulled. I think not only because it's against the law to steal narcotics & work under the influence but because it's abusive to take pain meds away from people who are actually in pain & make them suffer so they (the nurses) can get high or sell them on the street.
) I've seen too many instances of nurses abusing drugs & alcohol ON the job.I worked with one nurse who had a case of beer in his locker, well half of it was gone when they cut the lock off of his locker. I worked with another nurse who left their shift without counting meds. They called him immediatly to come back & count, he never showed up. That night they contacted his father & asked him to go to his house to look for him. His father found him dead inside of his front door of a drug overdose. I had another nurse who was stealing morphine. Replacing the morphine with water. Countless other nurses who always seemed high to us but nothing was ever done about it. I worked under a nursing supervisor who was not allowed to have keys to the narc drawer because he was a alcoholic. When a nurse would call off & he had to cover their shift, he would have to have another nurse come pass his narcs for him. My ex graduated about a year ago, he's a RN now. At the end of our relationship I discovered that he was a closet pill popper, so add another one to the list.
I don't understand why someone would go through all of those years of school only to lose it all to addiction. Anyone who has studied the meds & all nurses have, know how highly addictive a lot of these drugs are. What's especially sad is that they are stealing these meds that the patients really do need for pain & replacing them with pills like tylenol. This is especially prevelant in nursing homes where the majority of patients have impairments. They can't see or hear well, or they have dementia or alzheimers so they don't realize they aren't getting the meds they are suppose to be getting & when they complain of pain after they're given their meds, the nurses tell them they have to wait hours because they've already gotten their meds when in reality, they were given a tylenol for their broken hip.
The nurses license should be pulled. I think not only because it's against the law to steal narcotics & work under the influence but because it's abusive to take pain meds away from people who are actually in pain & make them suffer so they (the nurses) can get high or sell them on the street.