Re: Nurses Who Are Drug Addicts Originally Posted by burn out 
If you think someone is stealing the drugs you need to report it for no other reason than to clear yourself becasue if you think it is going on I am sure there are others that are suspicous too and may think it is you.
The time that I have found out that co workers were stealing drugs I was
very surprised at first then I looked back at some of the triggers I should have picked up on. The first time involved a male nurse and we used to laugh because when he bathed a patient he never rolled his sleeves up ( and he ALWAYS wore long sleeves...to hide the track marks).
The second time a coworker was fired for stealling drugs was trickey-er. This time she was not the user but was stealing drugs for her boyfriend. Looking back the only clue that I can see is that her patients were always
rowdy and complaining of pain and unsatisfied..the nights that she worked were always more heckit than other nights.
In both instances they were LPN's that would give the medicine for the RN and have her to one way or another chart it or sign for it which implicated alot of people and made it harder to track them down. This is why I do not like to work with nor do I think rehabiliated drug users need to be floor nurses.
I good way to check is to ask the patient after the pain med has been signed out if he received his pain med and did it help.
I have a few few more years of sobriety since this thread began. Also a better outlook on everything,,, but, I think maybe you should open your mind a little bit. It is your perogative to not want to work with recovering nurses. But, as stated in many other posts, the recovering nurse is not the one you need to worry about. It is the plain jane nurse who has never been in trouble before, the one who NO ONE IS WATCHING. The one you would never expect,, until it gets really bad, then the signs and symptoms start showing up. With the recovering nurse, she has jumped through hoops of fire to keep her license. Thats how much being a nurse means to her. She has to take random drug screens and call in everyday to find out if today is the day. She is NOT impaired. And if she does get impaired, it is caught right away. It does not go on for months, years, like you see with nurses who have never been diagnosed.
Most addicts are very good actors and impaired nurses are the BEST of actors... They hide their addiction from the workplace. They even hide thier feelings about their addiction to theirselves, until, of course, they become sober and start to recover.
I want to reitterate it again: The recovering nurse is NOT the nurse you need to be worried about.
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