CNA Supporters Spreading Silly Rumors Again
Today CNA supporters sent texts to nurses around the hospital about how the PFC had patients on their unit and they personally had SIX patients. Their big point was “What are you going to do in court when they ask you why you accepted the assignment?” and “You can’t say anything and you will lose your license!” It’s quite amazing to us how many false and/or silly rumors these nurses have started. I have to tell you that this is NOT TRUE.
Nurses do NOT lose their licenses for accepting the assignment that their unit gave them. Nurses lose their licenses when they do things like engaging in willfully harming patients, substance abuse, or get convicted of crimes (I’ve seen nurses convicted of animal abuse, child abuse, drug dealing, pimping, theft, murder and others lose their license- these have all been listed on the BRN website.) Not once have I seen competent nurses who acted in good faith lose their license.
A nurse might lose his or her job because they willfully disregarded a safety mechanism set in place to prevent errors AND showed no remorse for the error that occurred. I’ve seen nurses keep their jobs when they did something that mistakenly bypassed safety policies but they were genuinely upset about it and concerned for the patient’s welfare.
I do a little Nursing Standard of Care expert work in my free time. It is my experience that hospitals support their nurses. They cover the liability related to the error. They make sure that the nurse is okay psychologically, and receives whatever remedial training is necessary. If it is a system issue, the hospital administrators take it seriously and work to come up with a better solution. Nobody loses his or her job or license. Each person involved learns from the mistake and most likely becomes a better nurse as a result. But lose their license? Even if they had six patients on the day the error occurred? Doesn’t happen. And if you believe that it does, you’ve been drinking that CNA kool-aid again.