Looking for Nurses in Russellville

[cyberpest_69]

I am looking for any nurses in the Russellville or Pope or Yell county or surrounding areas that have had trouble with the hospital in Russellville, namely getting terminated then being threatened with losing your license or having a complaint lodged with the ASBN. I know this has happened to numerous nurses in the area, and I am curious as to how many nurses and your stories.

Here is mine:

I was (and still am) a med/surg nurse of 2 years with a BSN. I took a new job at the Russellville hospital in the ICU under a preceptorship of an RN to try to break into a new field.

As we all know, sometimes different nursing units at hospitals can be "clickish", but I tried my best to fit in and be a part of the team. It is harder when a nurse has been a nurse for a while and is not a new graduate, because when you are asked questions like "do you know how to give blood?", you don't want to seem "uppity" or a "know it all", so I would say 'Yes, I have given blood before, but never in ICU, so please show me how we do it here." The same with antibiotics I wasn't familiar with, or cardiac medicine, etc. I knew the procedures and the protocol, but wanted to be sure of myself (after all it was ICU and critical patients) and I did have a preceptor to show me the ropes, so I tried very hard to learn. However, my preceptor unfortunately for me, didn't seem to want to teach me much, even though I kept asking for a little more each time we were together. I tried not to be too pushy, but I felt as if my preceptorship was stuck in neutral.

Anyway, after 4 weeks of this my husband was admitted to the ICU with CHF and atrial fib on Tuesday, then on Friday evening when I came to work, he had been moved to the med/surg floor while he was still critical. To make a very long story short - to save his life, on Saturday (my day off), I had to have him transferred to a Little Rock hospital because the Russellville cardiologist whose care he had been under had gone on vacation for 6 days and left no on call physician.

The hospital I worked for gave me time off without pay to be with my husband while he was in ICU in Little Rock. When I returned to work, I worked for a week and half, then was terminated due to supposed "unprofessional conduct". When they called me and told me not to come in to work for my usual shift, I asked if there was anything wrong. My nurse manager said she was "looking into some things" and would get back to me. That was on Monday, on Wednesday they called me in and terminated me. Then they asked me to pay back their sign-on bonus money, then and there. I told them I didn't have my check book with me. That was the last week in July. At the end of the first week in August they called me and left me a message saying it was concerning my license. I called them back (and recorded the call), the hospital said if I didn't pay back the money, they would turn in a complaint against me to the ASBN. I told them if they would send me a copy of the sign-on bonus contract which I had never received, after my lawyer had looked over the contract, if I owed them the money, I would gladly pay them what I owed them. They hung up. According to the ASBN, the complaint against me was faxed to them the next day.

The Board did not use the hospital's complaint against me during their deliberations, but they did (which I found out later after reading and re-reading the Nurse Practice Act is actually illegal) go back into my short nursing career and find 3 instances to hold against me for unprofessional conduct (which were never originally filed with the ASBN) - 1) getting "huffy" with a lab tech (not true - but could not prove due to "he said she said") 2) arguing with a patient's family member (not true could be proven except could not get patient's name due to HIPPA) 3) not delegating correctly (also not true and could be proven except hospital conveniently lost physical paperwork that would prove innocence). For those of you that do not know, you have to appeal ALL the charges against you for the case to be dropped.

From the time the Board notifies you, you have 90 days to take them to civil court if you want to, but they don't tell you this, you must find it in the NPA. I could probably still do it, but it would take all the retirement money we have, and would not be worth it to get the flag off my license now.

I have only had one contract job since this happened to me, and that lasted 2 months. Now I am relegated to Home Health and maybe hospice jobs or travel nursing jobs, but have not found any of those as yet with the downed economy. And with many places hiring far more LPNs rather than RNs due to money constraints, I may have to start driving a fork lift to make ends meet.

I originally switched careers in 2002, went to school and became an RN because my mother died from pancreatic cancer. I took care of her the last 2 months of her life. I saw how the nurses at CARTI helped her, and I wanted to help people like they helped my mother. All I have ever wanted to do is help people with my nursing. I have always put my patients first and foremost in my job. I nurse because I care. I only wish I had know about what it means to be a nurse when I went to college the first time, and I would have 30 years under my belt instead of 28 months.:heartbeat

The good news is: My husband, who is now a Class 4 heart patient, survived his ordeal and is recovering and getting stronger every day. If it weren't for my nurse training, I may not have known what to do when the doctor moved him to the med-surg floor and left for vacation, not all family members know.

If there are any other nurses out there from this area of Russellville who have had similar problems with this hospital, I would like to know. I already know of one travel nurse who was in their ER for 3 weeks, apparently he found something wrong with some paperwork, then his contract was canceled and they filed a complaint against his license. He was a 30 yr nurse and he just lost his license. I guess I was lucky:o