Got Fired, reported to the board, want your opinion on this situation please!

just want to warn you: this is long! but i hope to counsel other young nurses about what i have gone through one day and would appreciated your feedback!

i can't even think of how to begin the story of how my nursing career has came about...

here's the back ground: i graduated from nursing school august of 2007 and starting working at a premier teaching hospital in my area! in september of 2007. i started in pediatrics, which is ironic because i hated peds in nursing school. but on a whim, and after much pestering by one of my friends who worked on the floor, i decided to interview. i had already been offered two jobs, one in cardiac surgery, one in the mother/infant unit. i went on the interview just to practice my interview skills. i ended up shadowing one of the nurses on the floor and absolutely, irrevocably fell in complete love with pediatrics! i can never imagine doing anything else.

the first year of nursing was hard, adjusting to the schedule and the new “grown-up” responsibilities. but at the end of each day, i loved my job and knew i made the right choice when i chose pediatric nursing. as i progressed at work i became chemotherapy certified, became a resource nurse, joined the nursing student education committee and the schedule committee (the hardest committee ever.. is was hard to please 90 people at once!). i was flourishing. i had heard horror stories from my old classmates of how much they hated their job, the coworkers, and their patients. i felt blessed to truly love my job each and every day. then some rainy days came….............

the most challenging aspect of nursing i have encountered is learning how to separate and leave it behind when i come home. i love cancer patients, and after a year of not losing any patients, i lost four in 3 months. on my unit, we had team nursing, so we grew really close to our patients. i had taken care of two who died on my watch within two weeks (both were palliative). i know this may not seem like a lot, but children do not usually die on our unit, the docs and nurses were really good at realizing when a patient was circling the drain, and was quickly moved to the picu. the second patient that died on my watch died while i was in her room. then a month later we unexpectantly lost a 16 year old cystic fibrosis patient that had been coming to our floor for all her life (i was on her nursing team). not even a month after that, my first primary died. he was a great kid and his death (on top of the other 3) effected me very hard! i was a new nurse, and i was grieving unsuccessfully.

one night, after a particularly rough shift, i came home and posted a poem he had written (that his mom put on his funeral bulletin) with a picture of him and i on a social networking site. for some reason, at the time, i thought since i did not use his name it would be okay. i was hurting, and i wanted to honor his memory in a innocent way. the next day, my friend called me and talked some sense into me and i to take the picture down realizing i could get into trouble. ten days later, my nm calls me to her office and tells me she has to report me to the compliance committee and that i faced termination.

needless to say, i was horrified and shocked! i wrote a proposal to my nm and the complience committee asking them to allow me to continue working based on my previous exemplary yearly evaluation and on the promise to do a type of “community service” to my profession. my proposal was to put together an educational teaching of “breaching confidentiality in the new technological world”. i wanted to teach my co-workers to learn from my mistake. i wanted to spread the message that breaking confidentiality is easier that you think, and holds a very serious punishment. i knew i messed up, but to me, immediate termination felt like a harsh sentence for my crime. i had no idea, that my grief-stricken ode to a former patient would carry the same weight as coming to work intoxicated, diverting drugs, forging medical records, or assaulting a patient!

i am positive that no one on that unit (myself included) expected me to be fired for the mistake i made. my mentor (a nurse that has worked on the unit for over 20 years) as well as a couple of the np’s from the clinics were even surprised and outraged. sometimes i feel like me being fired was not fair, because the usual support systems for nurses who had lost patients were not in place due to budget cuts. do not get me wrong, i do know what i did was a mistake and a violation. but my motives were not malicious. i was not gossiping or providing any information that was incriminating. i am almost positive if that patients mother knew i got fired, she would be livid, she would be knocking down doors trying to right this! i know this because she wrote two letter to the vp of nursing about the excellent care her son received while a patient at *hospital name witheld*, and i was specifically named in both. i think it should be said that i do not think what i did should go unpunished. i know i messed up, and i think i should have been punished, i just do not think firing me was exact fair... but i have come to terms with it and accept it. the part i find the hardest to deal with is that in my termination papers i am deemed "ineligible for rehire".

what is your take on this situation? i have since been reported to the board and hired a lawyer. i also got a new job, but it just sucks being "ineligible" for rehire at my old employer. (like i said it is the premiere hospital in the area). my lawyer seems to think we have a good case, since the parents of this patient have each spoken out about this both to my old employer and the board of nursing.