Lately I have witnessed some very scary things from people I know.
1. I was invited to a party or get together with some people that work at a very well known hospital where I am doing clinicals. The people that invited me were all medical professionals a medic, nurse BSN, ER charge nurse MSN, nurse MSN student, physical therapist, unit clerk, trauma nurse BSN and respiratory therapist. When I get to this party they are all high and or drunk. They had exstacy, coke, nitris oxide (whippets), hard alcohol and crystal meth. I stayed with them and had some drinks as I watched the night unfold. this was about 10pm when I got there. The house is across the street from the hospital. they proceed to do all these drugs at once to my dismay. I was absolutly dumbfounded, here these are people that I look up to, as they are very very good at what they do in the hospital and they are doing illegal drugs. the worst thing about all this is that 2 of the nurses and the respiratory therapist had to be at work at 7am the next morning. At about 4am they start freakin out cause they have to go to work soon and are in no shape to do so. At this point one of the other nurses gets a large amount of coke out of her car and instructs them to do as much as they can so that they will be awake and sharp for work. At this point I was like you guys are crazy at least call in sick. They were like no way I can't do that, so I asked what would happen if they killed a patient due to their current condition. The charge nurse proceded to tell me that they would not kill anyone and that even if they did get caught they would not get fired cause the hospital could not afford to lose any nurses.
I was like isn't that agianst the law for them not to fire you if you were caught?
2. One of the ladies that was there at that party 30 years of age and going to school for her PNP recently attempted to kill herself. She had been doing Meth for three days on top of extacy, when she was having "guy troubles" then crushed up a bottle of tylenol and drank it with coffee. Later another guy who is an RT finds her in a pool of blood and vomit and takes her to the next town's hospital so her own work mates don't see her this way. Her tox screen came back positive for all these drugs adn she stays in ICU for a week as they could not stabilize her for a while. When she recovers she loses her house, quits her job and moves a couple hours away to live with her parents while she recovers. As soon as she moves there is she gets another nursing job.
Now my thoughts on this are: why didn't this girl lose her nursing license after having all these drugs in her system? If these people were caught at work doing this they would be fired and lose their license right? and How on earth can these people be sooo smart but sooo stupid at the same time. Sorry for the long post but I was really confused by all this as I think that healthcare professionals should be upper class citizens and not engage in these activities and that they should be punished if they do. They could ahev killed someone. Your thoughts, experiences and knowledge on this subject would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. :(
:( 