Needing HR/experience advice

[AnnaR]

Hi everyone,

I work full time in a laboratory and I'm also a nursing student. 
I injured my back and hip pretty badly at work, and employee health placed me on work restrictions. 
my manager and supervisor was aware of these restrictions but did nothing to help me. 
my injury kept getting worse because of this.  My doctor and employee health told me to report my manager to HR for not helping me and following the work restrictions. 
Since then, they both have rude to me and it seems as though they have taken it incredibly personal.

recently, I was drawing morning routine labs on inpatients.  It was a typical 12 hour work day of being in intense pain and not getting help with the restrictions. 
One of the patients was chatting with me for a long time and I became distracted and accidentally mislabeled his vial of blood. 
As soon as I noticed it, I ran to the lab, found the specimen, spoke to the lab tech, found the person in charge of the lab told them, then I called the nurse in charge of that patient to let her know of my mistake, then I wrote myself up. The specimen was discarded and the patient was redrawn. 
 

randomly, my manager showed up, at 1130 at night, told me he "happened to just be in town" he brought me to his office and handed me a written corrective action report over my mislabel. 
 

I haven't known of any other lab assistant at my work who got this, even though many have made multiple mislabeling mistakes and I've worked as a lab assistant for 8 years and never made a single mistake before. 
 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

I'm not understanding, why toss the vial, why not just relabel correctly? I'll be honest, ANY field, not just healthcare, will find a way to get rid of you with an injury. It's an additional cost that they don't want, with the injury and payments for care, and extra staff to cover for the things that the injured person can't do. I'd start quietly looking for another job. Do not announce that you may need accommodations for an injury until you have signed a job offer

[chare]

Hoosier_RN said:

I'm not understanding, why toss the vial, why not just relabel correctly? ...

While this would make sense, I've never worked anywhere that would allow this.

ETA: I agree with @Hoosier_RN that you should start a job search and leave on your terms.  Best wishes.

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

chare said:

While this would make sense, I've never worked anywhere that would allow this.

I've never worked where it wasn't allowed, as long as pt ID was verified, and the tube was a needed type.  I never knew that some places didn't allow...

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

If you were injured at work and employee health placed you on work restrictions like light duty they should be honored or you should be taken off work and paid via workers comp.  You can always get a lawyer for workers comp issues esp if this injury is not healing and you might need further treatment, PT, MRI etc.  Do not let them push you out like without speaking to a workers comp lawyer about everything that is going on and how your manager and HR are not honoring your work restrictions and have even written you up.  The lawyer may be able to help you.  Sadly this type of behavior is not that uncommon.  My own aunt had to get a lawyer to get her workers comp injury treated and paid for appropriately as the hospital was stonewalling her.