Narconon

[runner5518]

Narconon is wanting to bring their medical detox clients to our facility for seven days; giving them basically only vitamins to detox on. We are a small hospital, at night we have 3 nurses, one in er and 2 on the floor, that is it in the entire facility at night. (no security) what is going to happen if one of these pt's goes off the deep end dt'ing and hurts one of us, or worse one of our other pt's that is just here for a medical tx? Hospital administration has not had a meeting with the nurses or anything to listen to our concerns. We were just told that next week they would start bring them to us..... So, what should we do? Just quite for our own safety or what? Thanks

[jadelpn, LPN, EMT-B]

Have you not had detoxing patients before?

Patients who are detoxing have orders that they are to be medicated accordngly. Or they should.

One can not assume that because someone is admitted for detox that they are automatically going to be dangerous.

That is a sweeping assumption.

Any patient at any time could be dangerous. For a variety of reasons.

It is not exclusive to the chemically dependent..And I am to assume that by "just vitamins" the patients are not going to be medicated with anything else? Patients in active withdrawal? Then they do have their own MD who is going to write orders for this? And be the MD who gets called at 2am because the patient has gone into a ETOH seizure?

One can never assume, however, instead of running amok, you will have patients in the fetal position on the bed....perhaps wishing for death if that is the case. And falls will be a huge risk--so I would take the lead and ask about all of these things. Because any patient deserves the chance to withdraw humanely. And like any person who has an altered mental status, remain free from falling.

I would ask about orders. And how someone is going to be medically detoxed without medication. They could do that on an outpatient basis at home. And if you are a small community hospital, then the local police would be called if the patient gets unruly? (Which would happen I would assume anyways for any unruly patient no matter what the diagnosis?)

[runner5518]

I'm really curious why the other hospitals stopped doing their detox or refused to start. They have been through a lot of them. They stopped doing it at their facility after a couple wrongful death suit that I seen on the news.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

A Google search on them reveals a ton of information......and no they don't do meds.

[runner5518]

Hey does anyone know anything about narconon besides what was on the news. They are supposed to start sending pts to our small, understaffed county hospital on Wednesday to start medical detox... Any advise??? We had no meetings to discuss this or inservice about what to do in certain situations.

Thanks in advance

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Duplicate threads merged as per site terms of service.

[Nonarconon]

Best you can do is post a message at the reaching for the tipping point forum (just google that). There are numerous people there that know Narconon very well who might be able help you, including the people you see in the news items about Narconon. I'm an activist there as well.