Evaluation scaries

Nurses Recovery

Published

Hey everyone!

I am new to the site and I am in need of some help/advice. Last month I was accused of diverting drugs from a hospital in SC while on a travel assignment. I am guilty. I feel horrible for what I have done. I took some narcotics a few times and took them with a friend. I was never physically dependent. I am being charged criminally by the hospital, but have not yet received my charges. I was told to contact the RPP program in SC and report to the sc BON. I have done both and signed my contract last week and they referred me to an evaluator to "receive a diagnosis or not." From what I have read.. it is in my best interest NOT to see an evaluator that they recommend. Do I have a choice? Does anyone know of a fair evaluator in SC? What can I expect at this evaluation? Can I expect a hair/drug test? I am so scared and overwhelmed. Any advice or recommendations would be SO SO GREATLY appreciated!

Sounds like you really had a thorough evaluation!

What a crock

Up Vote Up Vote ×

So I can do SC monitoring program in my home state (the drug testing, meetings, etc.) however, I can NOT work as a nurse in my home state. I could only work as a nurse in the state of SC bc that is where I'm doing the program. So for the five years I'm in this mess... I can't be a nurse unless I move to SC.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OR.

As best I can tell, contracts seem to require that you only work as a nurse for 12 months of the duration of the contract. Given the difficulty that many have of finding a job with the restrictions put into place, it often takes quite some time to do that. Heck, if they made people work in nursing for the whole five years of a contract, nobody would ever be done. God help us if they cooked up that idea.

You could conceivably suffer through thier farce of a treatment. Get what you will out of it. Move home. Do whatever not in nursing, get some time under your belt. On the downhill run, start looking at jobs in SC and go from there. Or move home temporarily and keep on the prowl for SC jobs. You could be pleasantly surprised. Some have been fortunate to find decent jobs, pretty quick.

There are options...not all of them totally lousy

Up Vote Up Vote ×

We had a question we were supposed to think about for a nurse support group meeting for a week. The question was "are you an alcoholic / addict?". We were supposed to self-diagnose based upon whatever recovery-dreck-literature is out there with no scientific backing what so ever. Anyway I brought in the DSM and applied the criteria for alcohol use / substance abuse disorder & most of us were in the "mild" category as per the DSM. However, everybody in the room supposedly using the same criteria to (no doubt) rip off our insurance carriers were labeled with a "severe" disorder. Money corrupts. I have no idea how a "mild" abuse disorder is treated but I don't think its 28 days inpatient then 3 months of IOP after being sober for three months. Simple money grab

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Is there any use in trying to get a lawyer familiar with working with the BON to try and fight the RPP program and allow me to see an independent evaluator vs their "recommended" evaluator tied to an inpatient rehab facility?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Personally I think the BONs are tied up with the rehab industry. They have either been sold a bill of goods about the efficacy of these programs or they are simply corrupt. I would love to see a class action suit filed against all these BONs and their buddies in the rehab industry based upon fraudulent claims to insurance companies for inflated diagnoses and economic harm done to nurses for "overtreatment" so all these players could keep raking in the cash. Imagine if 200 nurses compared the DSM diagnosis done by the rehab's intake counselor (salesman) and an actual MD specializing in addictions. According to the rehab industry I had a "severe" alcohol use disorder. I answered the same questions on my own and it came back as a "mild" disorder. They are objective questions so I'm pretty sure fraud was committed. Right now its he said / she said but if a couple hundred nurses had the same result I think that proves something. Extrapolate that to the treatment involved. How is a mild disorder treated reasonably? Is it reasonable to have nurses miss months of work so that private companies can be enriched with no benefit to the "treated" population except perhaps the dismal industry success rate of 15% when applied to the correct population?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OR.

In my personal experience the evaluators that I have had the misfortune of being exposed to had ZERO psychiatric/psychological training. Thier qualification for doing these things seemed to be an MD and a personal history of substance/alcohol use or abuse themselves.

I saw a bona fide psychiatrist once on day one of this multi day "evaluation/give us a few days to see if she's got money" thing. His report was the only part that stated my issue was not substance abuse. That was politely ignored as it did not fit into the profile. I'm surprised it made it into the actual record.

As far as a class action, the hard sell is that there is still the stigma against nurses being addicts/alcoholics. There is some publicizing of the damage that these programs do, certainly. But on a wider field there is still the "I don't want a junkie/alcoholic taking care of me" mindset.

These programs have been around for so long and are so ingrained into the idea of what to do with a troubled nurse that I'm not sure it's possible to extricate them from the BONs. Change from within is what it is going to take. Nurses need to be able to pick thier own evaluator (preferably one that actually has real credentials in addiction medicine) and pick thier own treatment facility if that is what is truly recommended. That alone will choke off the money faucet (or at least the private tap of victims that some of these horrible places have from IPN/PNAP/TPAPN) and force the programs to return thier focus to actual monitoring instead of money-making. Next we take on the fact that they need to concentrate on the monitoring being of nursing practice and not of activities outside of work. Mandating voluntary 12 step attendance?? Really, that has what to do with nursing, cattle herding or anything else? Indoctrinating me into the cult of Bill W. Or whatever the heck it is, I promise you will do nothing to ensure my safe practice as a nurse.

....steps off soapbox now and leaves room.....

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
How is a mild disorder treated reasonably? Is it reasonable to have nurses miss months of work so that private companies can be enriched with no benefit to the "treated" population except perhaps the dismal industry success rate of 15% when applied to the correct population?

15% is pretty dismal. Could that be part of the rationale for over-treating? People who don't have a severe disorder would have a better track record with or without treatment. Are they brought in to make the stats look better?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Yeah but I wonder if it does Tricia? Many of us in this giant net have no intention at all of sustained recovery. Honestly I think the folks caught in the web who need all this recovery benefit. Those that think there lives were saved cling to recovery and all that it has to offer & the rest of us merely do what we have to because we are forced to do so to avoid losing our jobs. For many stuck in the net planning the next use takes up a lot more contemplation than active recovery. Without a voluntary buy in at some point its a sham

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OR.
15% is pretty dismal. Could that be part of the rationale for over-treating? People who don't have a severe disorder would have a better track record with or without treatment. Are they brought in to make the stats look better?

Even when you ask these places what thier success rate is, they'll tell you "oh we have a really high success rate. Our clients don't drink/drug while in our program." Well duh. How about follow up? What percentage head right to the nearest bar or street corner when discharged? I am pretty sure that thier 91% success rate don't head straight to a Church basement for an AA meeting upon discharge.

My point is that "success rate" is an ill defined concept that can be twisted anyway it is needed to be for the moment. The truth of the matter is that it is all semantics in the wording. When you factor in human lives, the "treatment industry" is a dismal failure not matter how you look at it.

When it comes to nurses, this dismal failure is pulled in time and again and exploited by fellow nurses and physicians to make money. I don't know if these people really truly believe in this crap or are that corrupted or both. Either way, it's all very scary. Very very scary.....

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Hey guys. I have contacted a lawyer who is familiar with working with the board. He advises me to not go see the evaluator that RPP recommends. I am going to look for my own evaluator and my lawyer is going to request that they use that evaluation for my treatment plan. Does anyone have any advice on what type of evaluator to use? A psychologist? A physician? I am in the Charlotte NC area but don't care to drive for an honest eval. Thanks!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I would start by looking at the credentials of the guy that the SC BON recommended, so that your evaluator will be considered "just as good as" theirs. Also, maybe google some substance abuse treatment centers near you. You're going to have to do treatment, so try to locate the one you'll want to use, if you are given the choice. An outpatient treatment center would be ideal, so that inpatient isn't even on the table. Then look at their staff or services, they will have to have evaluation services, or an MD that diagnoses substance use disorder and refers patients to them. Or if not officially on their staff, they would be able to give you a list, if you contact them, of doctors (MD? Psychiatrist? Psychologist? Idk) who you could contact for your evaluation. I had never heard the term "IOP" before this all started, but you can google it and it will bring up pages of treatment centers.

Once you locate a treatment center that offers IOP that you like the looks of online, you can just call them up, tell them you need to find an addictionologist to do your evaluation, and they will know exactly what you're asking. It's all new terminology to you, but this is what they do every day.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment