Moral character

Published

Some states require the submission of a 'declaration of good moral character/turpitude' form for licensing/practicing and I was curious if Tennessee has such a requirement?

There are situations in which an employer does have a right to know about an employee's medical diagnosis, For example:

- the employee has been diagnosed with measles. The hospital would need to contact anyone the employee has been in contact with

- the employee has active TB

- the employee has dessiminated shingles

- if the emplyee operates dangerous machinery, the employer would need to know if the employee has been diagnosed with a seizure disorder

In other words, if the employee poses a risk to patients or other employees or if the illness could make the employee unable to perform their job safely, then the employer has a right to know.

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OP if you are still here I would be very careful in making your complaint. It is likely that it will be determined unfounded - but if the complaint were to be investigated and cause harm to your co-worker you could well find yourself on the wrong end of a libel/slander suit.

Which could end up costing you thousands of dollars to defend and if it does not go you way a judgement against you could cost you your job, and any personal assets you have.

Just saying

Hppy

The OP specifically asked about Tennessee. Tennessee has a statute that protects anyone who acts in good faith in reporting something to the BON.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.

What is this, 1985???

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
The OP specifically asked about Tennessee. Tennessee has a statute that protects anyone who acts in good faith in reporting something to the BON.

However if it would be up to the court to determine if the report was made in good faith or with malicious intent. Any private citizen can file a lawsuit against anyone else. In this case without knowing specifics a libel/slander suit could be filed civilly against the OP if the complainant could prove malicious intent and that the complainant's reputation suffered harm because of said report.

Hppy

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I agree with previous posters. A co-workers medical condition is none of your business. Especially if it has no affect on patient care, in which case you'll only be stirring the pot. This is why I choose not to diverge personal information to people I work with, especially medical info.

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Specializes in Flight Nursing, Emergency, Forensics, SANE, Trauma.

What the heck does a medical condition have to do with "morality"?

Short of having an addiction that the person is imbibing in the workplace, diverting medication, or purposefully attempting to make someone ill-- I honestly think you're being unreasonable. What did this person do to you that you would drag someone through the dirt and essentially put their career in danger for?

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I find it odd that you wont disclose what it is that the person has that you feel you have to report, but seem to get upset when no one agrees with you. Without that information, nobody can give you an accurate answer because this is basically a one sided story; your side. Would you want someone reporting you or agreeing to report you without all the facts?

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Specializes in PACU.
I think I watched too many episodes of Dark Shadows and X Files and the like. All I could imagine is the offender is an incubus or succubus. I do not know the gender of the OP offender.

Me too! One to many episodes of SuperNatural.

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A lot of posters seem to think the OP asked whether they should report someone. They did not. OP had already decided to report what s/he had witnessed.

OPs only question was did Tennessee have a "good moral character" requirement for nurses.

It also seems people are assuming OP is a nurse. I suspect that OP is not a medical professional because:

- OP didn't know to check the Tennessee Nurse Practice Act to find out if there is a morals requirement

- OP refers to "standard precautionary procedures" instead of "universal precautions"

- OP says she witnessed something she thought was "incredibly unprofessional" but wasn't sure and would "defer to the judgement of those who know better" meaning the BON

- OP joined in Jun 2016 and this is their only post

All we know is that OP witnessed something that she thought "was incredibly unprofessional" and when she asked the nurse about it, OP thought "their response was totally unsatisfactory"

If OP is a member of the public, s/he should ask the nurse about what she saw.

If the member of the public is not satisfied with the nurse's response, they should feel free to either go to the nurse's manager or the BON.

A member of the public should not be afraid of being sued for slander/libel/defamation in seeking an answer about whether what they witnessed is acceptable/ethical/meets standard of care. All that would do is undermine the public's trust in health professionals.

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Specializes in Hospice.

Her question was addressed on the first page of the thread.

Non-medical members of the public are still bound by HIPAA if they have access to health information in any professional capacity, i.e. billing, coding, insurance processing, paralegal research, etc.

The OP was deliberately opaque about how she came by the info, about the behavior she witnessed and about the specific health issue she felt would endanger patients (probably appropriately so on a public forum). She also implied that she would inform the caregiver's employer as well as the BON. Not a big stretch to imagine this as stalking and/or malicious harassment, both of which are actionable.

I think posters' warnings were entirely justified.

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Actually I do, but I am preparing to submit a complaint against someone working in Tennessee that I feel does NOT have good moral character and shouldn't be working with patients. I'm sure you don't know anyone like that, but unfortunately, they exist and if that person were to transmit a communicable disease which they are desperate to hide from their employer, well, I would feel terrible for not reporting it. Sorry f you don't agree...

You are sliding on a slippery slope here. You do not KNOW that this person has anything at all. And if you do, the information was obtained HOW exactly--through protected health information? The BON doesn't take too kindly to that, and neither does the government, and you could get sanctioned for even suggesting that this nurse has a communicable disease via information you "heard" you obtained from a medical record, or you assume. Slander much?

Which, some diseases are protected classes to begin with.

You are perpetuating a myth if you are talking something along the lines of HIV.....but I am not sure what "communicable disease" in which you are referring. Or what this has any such thing to do with "good moral character".

OP, what you personally feel should not even be a factor in how you practice. And your practice needs and overhaul if you are assuming, listening to gossip or checking out medical records on co-workers.

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A lot of posters seem to think the OP asked whether they should report someone. They did not. OP had already decided to report what s/he had witnessed.

I think it was obvious that OP had already made her mind up about reporting. To me and I believe to some other posters as well, there's a logical disconnect between her decision to report the nurse and the question she posed here in this thread. She was asked the very logical question "how is a medical disease a failure of moral turpitude?" A question that she declined to answer.

I don't know if OP's decision to report the nurse is based on medical ignorance (regarding disease transmission) or on being a moralistic busybody, but I'm pretty sure that it's one of the two. If it is the former I think that the OP could benefit from educating herself before making a report to this nurse's employer and the BoN. To me it seems unnecessarily intrusive to divulge a person's health data to third parties if a person could have their fears assuaged by simply reading up on or consulting a medical professional on disease transmission before taking taking the drastic measure of reporting.

If the member of the public is not satisfied with the nurse's response, they should feel free to either go to the nurse's manager or the BON.

Without knowing all the relevant US laws I would still assume that the right to disclose facts about the nurses' health could be limited by how the OP came into possession of the nurses' health information. In some situations OP may well be legally obligated to not pass them on. We don't have enough facts about this particular case available to us to know if any legal restrictions on OP's right to share this information apply here.

It also seems people are assuming OP is a nurse. I suspect that OP is not a medical professional

OP joined in Jun 2016 and this is their only post

I noticed the post count and I don't think that the OP is a nurse either.

It seems to me that the main problem that the OP seems to have with the nurse is that s/he hasn't disclosed his or her medical condition to their employer. OP said:

I can assure you that this is not a 'protected' individual because they are adamant about withholding the information from their employer and that only serves to make me very concerned about the ethics of this individual, specifically their ability to adhere to standard precautionary practices which might arouse suspicion in co-workers and superiors.

You seriously don't think that the employer has the right to know that a healthcare worker has a medical condition that could adversely effect patients? That's just ignorant, so I'm going to ignore your suggestion.

I'm pretty sure that we're not discussing airborne transmission here and the nurse in question doesn't have the measles or active TB. It's likely either HIV or HepC. It sounds to me that OP thinks that for example an HIV positive healthcare worker should use different universal precautions than other healthcare professionals. This tells me that OP doesn't understand universal precautions at all. Why else would OP think that co-workers or superiors might get suspicious when the nurse practices precautions the way OP thinks it should be done? I bet this is something like OP thinking that a HIV+ nurse should use gloves when shaking a patient's hand or something similar.

If the nurse doesn't have a legal obligation to disclose his or her particular medical condition to his or her employer and if by practising proper universal precautions the nurse doesn't pose a risk to his or her patients, then OP has no reason to question the nurse's ethics based on the non-disclosure of the medical condition.

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