I thought this forum might suit the topic a little better, maybe someone may have a better understanding than I do. If there are any lab specialists out there that would be great lol! Forgive me for the lengthy post, in advance.
The purpose of this thread is mostly to ask the question: Can a urine drug screen be accurate after sitting in room temp x 4 days? Ive googled and most of the info i have found is that chain of custody states it should be frozen/refrigerated asap and sent out at least within 24 hours.
If youd like to know more info heres some background: I was pulled for a random at my hospital due to a pharmacy report red flagging me. I was pulled aside by house supervisor immediately arriving to the floor before starting my shift. This is night shift so it was only her and i reporting to employee health, she had to call someone in to conduct the test, on a holiday btw. (On a side note the nurse called in brought a family member or friend with her, which surprised me because I feel like that should be a violation of my privacy, any thoughts on that?) Anyway, she conducted the test, we did all as usual, she set the test with the paperwork on the counter, shut the lights off and we all walked out, she locked the door. And i asked "So its ok to just sit there on the desk?" & her reponse was "Yea its good, the doors will be locked and itll be shipped out on monday via fedex" (holiday weekend so that means 4 days later when the main person comes back to work). I was in so much shock at the time that i didnt think much else about it until later. The house supervisor (along with the pre-written hospital policy) states it takes 5-7 days to get results back & ill be notified by my manager. I just feel like this is very strange and assume I may have to retest if it comes back unreadable or whatever, which hopefully theyll give me the chance and i dont have to fight with them about it. Thanks for reading!
Thank you for sharing your story Kallie3006. I actually just read your story the other day, coincidentally. And I have read several others like yours, much more than Id like to thats for sure! That has to be very stressful & and its a shame that several of you have terrible histories with the BON. Im just hoping i will not have the same fate, but from what I've read now, man you can't be too sure! Technically, it makes you realize your entire career with this license, you can never be too sure. Its crazy.
Thanks for your response ThePsychWhisperer. This is the gist that I am getting, which is good because a google search doesnt give much information, which is why i wanted to ask. And no that is not the case, i am actually hoping the specimen would be good, as I posted in a comment. I dont want to make any fuss over the chain of custody i was just curious as it was a surprise to me and i wanted to know more. It actually eases my anxiety to hope that that being left out wouldnt likely increase the risk of false positives, as i know is already a risk based off of some other stories.
I was accused of being under the influence at work and had to do a probable cause at the end of my shift. Like you, I planned on returning to work and having no issues with the test. I was terminated 5 days after the probable cause collection, they said I was positive for methadone and benzos. The test was done as an EIA ( enzyme immunoassay) and apparently the confirmation was an EIA as well (still trying to figure out how that works?) It took me 14 months of hell and fighting to clear my name.
When did you have to submit this sample? I would suggest getting your own drug test completed, so you have proof that you are in fact negative. I had a hair test complete red that was negative and the BON didn't care about that one bit and still made me enroll into monitoring for a year. Once I had proof that I was negative ( the original sample retested with GC/MS cane back negative) I dropped out of EEP, had my case kicked back to the BON and closed.
I'm not trying to scare you, just making you aware. I hope everything turns out ok for you.
I've never heard of using an EIA for drug testing. Learn something new every day.
Specializes in Surgical, Home Infusions, HVU, PCU, Neuro.
I've never heard of using an EIA for drug testing. Learn something new every day.
I've learned more than I wanted to know with drug testing lol. Apparently the same test was used again to "comfirm" which is what started my venture down that hell hole. I dont know how many labs actually use this method for their testing but when I was able to actually get the GC/MS test ran on my specimen it was negative.
Hello all! Im slightly behind on posting an update, but I thought it might still be helpful to someone in case any of these circumstances happen to them. So in the end, all was good. My test came back and I was thankfully able to return to work with no issues! But the couple of things I learned in the process that may not apply to all, but in my case: A urine test is good for that long, at least in terms of it not being rejected. I didnt get a specific answer but i believe the others are correct that its about a week. My work uses a lab thats a few states away and they ran a very specific opioid panel, one that includes much more than your average employment urine screen. During the waiting period i was very confused about how the MRO situation works, but in my case our Mro works with the hospital so they just sign off on it in the end. I dont know why, but i pictured it as being someone from the lab that would call me and go over everything. But it didnt work like that. And the most important thing I learned was be very careful documenting and following the guidelines when dealing with narcotics. Yes, very obvious statement but lets be honest. I can pass maybe 30+ narcs in a shift, at the least, so it can get really out of hand sometimes. But this lesson has shown me that I need to slow down and take the extra time to double check everything, and dont pull in advance. These are different times, and the rules are getting much stricter, at least than what im use to. It almost seems like things have changed overnight. My job actually never gave me a specific reason as to why this happened, other than our "new and updated" pharmacy program flagged me, and I was pretty much told that I just drew the short end of a stick, so to speak. So dont think it cant happen to you, many others can vouch for that also and have much worse circumstances! In the end, if youre not doing anything wrong, hey its a paid vacation. But the stress of all the "what-ifs" will get to you, so stop reading the internet haha. Ok Ill end my rant now. Thanks for reading!
Anon2422
8 Posts
Thank you for sharing your story Kallie3006. I actually just read your story the other day, coincidentally. And I have read several others like yours, much more than Id like to thats for sure! That has to be very stressful & and its a shame that several of you have terrible histories with the BON. Im just hoping i will not have the same fate, but from what I've read now, man you can't be too sure! Technically, it makes you realize your entire career with this license, you can never be too sure. Its crazy.