Question about reporting a nursing facility?
Me and my wife are both nurses and my wife works at a substance abuse rehab facility that utilizes both LPN and RNs to detox patients from a multitude of substances. It is a locked unit and patients cannot leave without being allowed.
She worked night shift and was just fired for not allowing an intoxicated young man on the unit who showed up in the middle of the night without any documentation nor being made aware he was coming.
Apparently the young man was a patient that comes during the day for meetings and was in some sort of program that she does not see on nights and was never trained on.
The admissions director was a past patient who graduated from the rehab program and was offered a job which is great for him but he has no qualifications nor formal education.
He got onto her saying she should have allowed him on the unit and told the technician that she should have let him in and gotten his BAC and allowed him to stay.
I have never once heard of this being a proper route of admission at any facility. It does not seem safe at all and sounds illegal.
There was no way to tell if this was an actual patient nor what substances he was using. He could have been a past patient who had a negative experience and wanted to cause harm or had a weapon.
She advised his parents who were with him to take him to the ER and get medically cleared before coming back during the day, which was the safest option at the time for the patient, herself, and her 26 patients, 10 of which were detoxing and required her attention.
Should this be reported to the health facilities commission?
It feels unfair that her career could be affected because those without any medical qualifications are telling nurses how to do their jobs?
This cannot be legal to operate a locked unit in this manner. That same day a patient had a seizure and there is only one vial of Ativan in the entire facility.
Edit: For further clarifying information, the admissions director I spoke of also told her the patient did not require a nurses assessment? He has no qualifications yet is able to make the decision if a nurse should take over care of a patient without a nurses assessment and lock him in the unit with the 26 other patients? And he was attempting to delegate retrieving labs (BAC) from the patient despite having no qualifications. The patient could have also had drugs on him and overdosed in the locked unit with her, which happens frequently even for actual patients who have snuck in contraband. My wife told me she feels the admissions director was afraid they would lose the admission and business of the young man and was upset that she sent him to the emergency room because he could have been admitted there instead. I am an ICU nurse and know very well that alcohol withdrawal can have deadly consequences. I recently sent a 21 year old home on hospice for alcohol related organ failure, believe it or not. I strongly feel this facility needs reported for the way they practice. We became nurses to take care of patients and keep them safe, not make money for a company. She was also only one of 2 nurses in the entire facility at night.