Bipolar Nursing Clinicals False Drug Positive

[sodapopgirl, LPN]

I have bipolar and anxiety for which I take lamictal and buspar. I am thinking about entering a nursing program. I have done the research, and they give you a form to fill out that requests the name of your diagnoses, medications, treating physician, release of all medical records and continual release as new info becomes available.....yea, I don’t think so. I won’t fill it out, and I will tell them I’ve never been to the doctor. I mean what are they gonna do? Go look it up on the public patient health info website?? Right? I live in Louisiana by the way.

So I did my research on Lamictal and Buspar and BOTH can cause false positives. I will need to take a drug screen upon entering the clinical phase of the program and then randomly as I progress through the program. If I get a false positive I want to know what happens. I’m sure variations exist nationally, but my hope is that I only have to report the medications I was taking to the diagnostic center that will determine if it was indeed a false positive. For instance, if I test positive, I will obviously tell them there is no way I was doing illicit drugs and I want further testing of the sample by a lab. They will then send that off and the lab will be in contact with me. It is my hope that I will be able to tell ONLY the lab which medications I am on and no other entity. Then the lab can only report back to the school that I was negative and it happened to be an instance of a false positive. This way only the lab knows which medications I was taking.

Now if I have to report my recent intake of medications to the school OR the lab has the authority to disclose to the school which medications caused my false positive then that’s something I have an issue with obviously.

Any advice? What happens with false positives in nursing school. What info can they glean from the whole process of the lab testing the sample...like medications that caused the false positive? Thanks to those who take your time to reply. It is beyond appreciated.

[MunoRN, RN]

First, let me point out that I completely get the desire to keep one's health history private, particularly mental health history, and almost always a person's health history is nobody's business but there own. But when someone goes into a field like nursing, they take on an obligation of increased accountability compared to the general public.

This means that for drug testing, you can be tested for legally prescribed medications, not just illegal use. Not all employers of nurses choose to do this, although some do, every employer I've worked for as a nurse has prohibited the use of potentially impairing medications, regardless of prescription.

The lab MRO will report back whatever positive results that the employer has listed as being reportable, for 'normal' jobs this is limited to illegal use (either illegal drugs or non-prescribed controlled substances). For nursing jobs, the employer can request results for any potentially impairing medication, typically defined as any medication that carries the "use caution when driving or operating machinery" warning, which your medication do. The lab MRO won't ask for a prescription prior to reporting the result, since that doesn't matter.

Nursing schools are typically obligated to by their clinical sites to abide by their requirements for practice including drug screening, so while it's the school requiring the screening, it's really a requirement of a non-school entity which is free to make those requirements.

[Molly90210]

They are testing for illegal drugs and controlled drugs. The initial screen may indicate a positive result but that is only preliminary as many things cause false positives. They will do a gas chromatography mass spec of the sample and see that it is negative for drugs of abuse, and report it as such. They will not test specifically for lamictal and they will not test specifically for buspar. They cannot test for every medication under the sun, that would be very expensive, in other words, if you are functioning fine, why would they Even care. I think you are worrying about nothing and you will be fine. Study hard, and be the best nurse you can.