I am a friend of a really intelligent and caring respiratory therapist who was recently fired from XXXXX Hospital in YYYYYY because she handed cough medicine to a patient when the attending RN handed it to her and asked her to do so.
Should my friend have told the RN, no? Is this a fireable offense? It makes me upset as she has twin boys to raise and works her tail off for something a layman like myself would consider petty and vindictive.
I want to help her, but because we live in hyper-conservative Texas, workers have no rights.
I think that it was a little harsh that your friend was fired. If harm was done to the patient then thats a different story. However, she was wrong for administering the medication since this is the RN's responsibility. It is very important for all licensed professional to practice within their specialty.
That's what I was wondering - they both violated policy. RT gave a med she shouldn't, but RN gave the med to someone else to administer. I certainly hope that if the offense was worth terminating the RT, that the RN was also disiplined. Was the RT terminated for just this offense, or had there been something else that contributed to the decision to terminate her?
Holy cow there are a lot of you nurses and with a lot to say! This is really cool of you to all reply.
So from what I gather,
The RN went to the room to give her the cough PILL. (never heard of a cough pill, but oh well) My friend the RT was giving a RT treatment at the time. The RN said here, give this to her when you are done.
Then when she went out to the nurses desk, someone asked, did you give her her medicine already and she replied, I gave it to 'my friend' to give to her after her treatment. All went downhill from there.
My friend believes that her recent complaints about scheduling made the decision to get rid of her easier, but she had never had any warnings or issues at all.
I just think in this day of massive unemployment and terrible economic woes, you don;t fire a mother of 3 year old twins on her first error.
Holy cow there are a lot of you nurses and with a lot to say! This is really cool of you to all reply.
So from what I gather,
The RN went to the room to give her the cough PILL. (never heard of a cough pill, but oh well) My friend the RT was giving a RT treatment at the time. The RN said here, give this to her when you are done.
Then when she went out to the nurses desk, someone asked, did you give her her medicine already and she replied, I gave it to 'my friend' to give to her after her treatment. All went downhill from there.
Ahhh - she was probably going in to administer Tessalon Perles or something similar. The nurse didn't wait for the patient to take the med. The RN in my opinion first screwed up when telling RT to give it. She/He is wrong in that aspect. She prob should said "let me know when she's done and I'll bring it back". And, just my .02 but she probably shouldn't have come out of the room and announced that she delegated the RT to administer the meds.
Seems like if RT was in trouvle, RN should be in a bit of hot water too - RN asked the RT to give it, and RN also said the fact that she got RT to give it instead.
u know this is weird, but I remember doing this a long time ago and never thought anything of it. We worked peds and always had our hands full with RSV and such. I remember comming in and holding the med, sayin "oh, I'll come back later" and the RT sayin "that's ok, I'll give it to her when I'm done" I at first said no, then said "yes" because I didn't want to unsettle a settled kid, (once they got through with the RT they could breathe, hence sleep.)
I guess I look at it as a teachable situation to bring up in the staff meeting of nurses and just say..don't do this it's not good practice. I think the comment abt the NSG and RT dept makes a lot of sense. Seperate dept, seperate disciplinary action at the discretion of the manager. Sucks though...
sounds pretty petty reason to can someone. i think it would have been played better if the dept. managers would council both the nurse and resp tech. and made them do a inservce for both the depts on that issue. atleast that is what i would have done if i was incharge.
smily nurse, BSN, RN
155 Posts
..... and what happened to the nurse?....