HI, as we all do sometimes, I had three beers, and decided to drive my friend to her home, which I know it was a mistake, especially my car had an expired sticker(waiting for the DMV sticker) and is quite old, a bargain for the cops to pull me over. That was the reason, I got pulled over.) I understand and accept my mistake and want to fix, and will do it for sure.
I want to fix this problem , I have never had any problems with the law, this was my first offense having drunk 3 coronas, I think it was just bad luck. I am a good student, work hard to achieve my goals, and love nursing.
It sounds to me that okay, I will go to classes DUI program everything, but 3 beers and then suddenly from night to day , you are a criminal, it's very funny to me this situation and at the same time scary.
PLease if anyone knows about the consequences , could you let me know?
once again, thanks a lot for your help, the nurses here have always been so good, I love this website.
Not really a fair statement. A bunch of friends and I go out to the bars three or four times a month...one of us always stays sober and the sober one is the only one to drive. The designated driver picks everyone up at home and takes them home after we are done. Just because you choose to drink, does not mean that you will drink and drive. Whether the OP likes it or not, a crime has been committed...thankfully, no one was harmed, but what happened was still against the law.
I hope that the OP learns from this and is allowed to take NCLEX. Sometimes BONs require nurses or potential nurses to take a class on ethics or have some sort of probation period...hopefully, that will be the worst the OP has to go through. There is a lesson to be learned here...don't drink and drive, no matter how in control you think you are...follow the rules, they are in place for a reason.
You know, I looked back at the age of the original poster. He is over 30 years old! It's time to grow up. You are no kid! As a nurse, you'll be dealing with people's lives: a huge cost when a mistake is made. I like the post about ethics. You need to do some serious thinking and take a couple of ethics courses. I hope, if you see this as a choice you should NOT have made, then you be allowed to take the exams. If you see this as "bad luck", you truly need to look for another career. Nursing doesn't need people who already walk on the edge before they start.
I also would like to know just what they found your blood alcohol level to be.
I agree with all the previous posters (especially NurseFirst and 3rdShiftGuy) about taking responsibility. Your first post especially just chalked your situation up to "bad luck". It was not bad luck, it was a serious lapse in judgement. To move forward you need to acknowledge that and not brush it off as "bad luck".
You appear to be taking this with an all too light (and cocky) attitude and blaming luck, law enforcement and law when you are the one that made the bad decision to drink and drive.
Now, I too hope you learn from this and can go on to lead a productive life and touch and improve the lives of those around you.
and Here it is, You have officially pissed of someone who was hit by a drunk driver while driving home from working in the ER one night. What happened? The guy had a "couple of beers", drove himself home, crossed the double yellow line, and hit me even though i tried to swerve out of the way. I was pinned in the car, had an open tib/fib fracture, a femur fracture, a bruised pelvis, vascular damage in my leg, and avulsed the majority of my left forearm. I got multiple units of blood, an 8 hour reconstructive surgery on my leg, and Oh yeah, this was thanksgiving day. Way to spend a holiday. But I guess it's ok because he only had a few beers and he was a hard working person right? His blood alcohol level was 1.0, right at the state limit to get charged with a DUI.
So don't forget, there are many factors involved in how much you can drink and still be under the legal limit, and no matter what the limit is, you still might not be ok to drive. So DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE. I almost died because of people like you who write off the fact that they made a bad decision and how it must be the police's fault you got a DUI or it's the license plates fault you got pulled over.
I don't know Calif laws, but here in FLorida you have only 10 days from the date of the ticket to request a hearing to possibly save your drivers license. Get a lawyer today!!!!!! (and that includes provisional driving)
If you already had your nursing license, and thru court proceedings were able to reduce or convert your dui to a lesser charge, you would keep that nursing license. However you are in a diff situation, you still need to apply for a state license and will be in the middle of your court/trial /sentencing-these thingds usually take quite a bit of time. I agree call the BON and find out for sure what you can do. Please complete your nursing program no matter what the outcome of your findings, rules change everyday and vary from state to state. I am not advocating any one with a criminal record change states, just the facts that what is prohibited in one state may not be in another.
I repeat get a lawyer TODAY, mortgage your house, beg from your parents--do whatever it takes to get an attorney working on this matter NOW
okay so you are not a bad person, work hard for what you want to become and all that...that is good for you. it was also good for the lawyer who had been out with his client celebrating the big court case he had just won when he ran over my sister.
yep that's right, she was out with her friends, and they had been drinking, all of them knew that they had no business driving home, so my sister walked across the street to a pay phone and called her boyfriend to come and get them. she then stood on the corner and waited for the signal to cross the street to turn green, just as she stepped off the curve, she was hit. the first guy ran the red light and hit her, she flew into the air, landed on her head in the street, and what did he do....he just kept on going. NEVER STOPPED. the poor drunk sucker that also ran the light behind him was the 2nd person to hit her. He stopped, and to this day is still sitting in jail...and I will spend every last breath I have in my body and every dollar I ever hope to earn to see that he stays there, dont even think that just because she was hit by the first car she would have died, cause the docs told us they could have fixed the damage to her face, the broken legs, arms and hip, it was the damage from the second car running over her and ripping her stomach wide open the killed her,......i stood in the emergency room at emory hospital and watched my sister bleed to death because some DRUNK RETARD got in his car and drove.
i send copies of the newspaper article to him in jail every couple of months, to remind him of what he did, and i send them to his family to. you can never replace someone, and you can never imagine the feeling I get when I look into the eyes of that beautiful 8 year old girl that I wound up with custody of, knowing how much she reminds me of her mom. a mom she will never get to shop for a wedding dress with, shop for baby clothes with, NOTHING. she lost her mom due to stupidity of someone else.
the guy in the first car (1999 black jeep cherokee) was never found. but god will find him, and he will get his someday. what goes around comes around to everyone for all that you do.
think of what a good person you are and how hard you work when you have to look your 3 year old niece in the face and tell her that her mommy was killed, or when you still take that same child to the cemetary every saturday so that she can sit and talk to the mother that someone doing something STUPID AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE took away from her.:angryfire
It happened to a great friend of mine, and it's a big mistake. There should be ways to fix a problem, what about those nurses who are given many chances? especially, addicted nurses. They are treated with respect, get a chance to prove themselves that they can work as a RN. sometimes, of course some cannot make it, but at least there is a chance to fix things. All I hear is that a first offense DUI and you are done with your life. I admit my mistake , but at the same time want to do things right, and get it over with life. Since that day, I Cannot even drink a beer. For the ones, who like to judge and crucify, I won't even bother to read. For the clever ones who can advise, teach, guide, and help another fellow nurse , please drop a line. Thanks a lot for your consideration.
Some mistakes are fixable; others are not. The reality is life CAN change in the blink of an eye. The guy who runs over his kid, the child who accidentally shoots and kills his best friend...they were all mistakes; a small lapse in judgement, even "bad luck"--but they forever altered the lives of those who made the mistake, but also the lives of others--those mistakes cannot be rectified. That's why you have to be rigorous in thinking through your actions, thinking through the possibilities. IOW, live your life to garner good luck, as they say, "good luck comes to the prepared."
My guess is that you are in your 20s. You feel persecuted and judged because you got caught and you want sympathy. You are getting sympathy--but you are also getting "tough love."
My daughter got a DUI in CA nearly 4 years ago. She is now in Florida and she is still paying for it. It was er 2nd DUI, Joe. She went to jail. It wasn't fun, because she wasn't in there with sweet little sorority sisters. It was a humiliating experience and it cost her over $6,000. in attorney fees and fines, not counting her insurance rates. She also wanted to be a nurse, but found that getting it all cleared up was too expensive. She no longer even considers drinking and driving. I am afraid that you may have some miserable days ahead. I'm sorry for you, but I do not condone what you did. Time to grow up!
It happened to a great friend of mine, and it's a big mistake. There should be ways to fix a problem, what about those nurses who are given many chances? especially, addicted nurses. They are treated with respect, get a chance to prove themselves that they can work as a RN. sometimes, of course some cannot make it, but at least there is a chance to fix things. All I hear is that a first offense DUI and you are done with your life. I admit my mistake , but at the same time want to do things right, and get it over with life. Since that day, I Cannot even drink a beer. For the ones, who like to judge and crucify, I won't even bother to read. For the clever ones who can advise, teach, guide, and help another fellow nurse , please drop a line. Thanks a lot for your consideration.
Yeah, it's easy to say oh yeah, you are criminal for drinking 3 coronas, bla, bla, bla, I completely know that I made a mistake and willing to pay the consequences, but once again I have never done anything wrong with the law, I believe a person deserves a chance. I know people have drunk and killed innocent people on the road and is terrible. I have been a great student , always took care of my patients, and passionate about this career. Yeah, it was a terrible mistake, but please people like to exaggerate a little bit, never drive again, prison. I never had an accident in my life, always paid an inexpensive car insurance, even tickets I never got. The way I see is easy to crucify those poor students that have to struggle day by day in order to survive for one mistake, great job. I am sure there should better ways to handle this situation.
Uh, you DID have a chance. We all do. It's the option NOT to drink and drive, to make the right choices in your life. What good does making the right choices in school make if you're going to turn around and make potentially deadly ones?
It was not a mistake. It was an on-purpose. You got behind the wheel ON PURPOSE, not by mistake. It doesn't matter if you've never had an accident. The reason we have laws punishing people for DWI is to deter them from 1) never doing it again, and 2) detering people from doing it in the first place. You made your choice. Please don't call it a mistake.
Why do you think you're being "crucified"? Because you broke a law? That is YOUR problem, and you made it everyone else's problem when you chose to endager their lives by driving impaired.
I know I'm in the minority, but I think people that drink and drive should NEVER see their drivers license again - EVER. Everyone - EVERYONE - knows the consequences of drinking and driving, and what can happen. A license is not a right - it's a privilege. Why should people get chance after chance? To what, kill someone? And yes, my own father was convicted of DWI, and I had the SAME views then as now. He did lose his license, did a state-mandated program, and got his license back. And I still feel he, and everyone else, should not. I just haven't heard any good extenuating circumstance yet as to why someone NEEDS to drink and drive. I might feel differently if there was one.
As far as getting a nursing license, I will say that if they let past alcoholics and drug addicts regain their licenses, then everyone should get that chance. Addiction is a far different problem than DWI. Someone can be can alcoholic or addict without driving to endanger.
Specializes in critical care; community health; psych.
When I was at a party last weekend and others were sipping on alcohol, I was nursing a coke. It just wasn't worth it. Let's hope that others don't make this same mistake, especially with spring break happening.
...that you have to go thru this. maybe veridican is right; maybe it's your "karma" or "fate" or whatever that this happened to you. i remember several years ago getting involved in a discussion about whether someone who had been busted for dealing drugs (and, again, with a "chance" circumstance that they were caught doing this--normally didn't do it, but ... whatever.) who was in the process of applying to medical school.
i also remember meeting a medical student, back in the late '60s, who offered me a joint to smoke. i remember thinking, wow...all that work to get into medical school, the work in medical school, could go up in smoke if he were caught (i think this might have been when marijuana possession was a felony...got at least one person i know of out of going to viet nam--a bit ironic, considering the number of soldiers who became addicted to drugs over there.).
in one emt class i took the instructor was very clear about what kind of risks you take by even being in the same location where marijuana (for instance) is being smoked (like having your emt cert removed and denied from being an emt subsequently.)
what has happened to you is a wake up call. i would say that most people, in growing up, get a few wake up calls. growing up in the sixties, there are any number of things which i did which could have drastically interfered with my future; i'm not proud of that, but it is a fact. fortunately for me, i managed to straighten my life out before anything drastic happened.
you needed a wake up call to bring you along the road of maturity, of recognizing that actions have risks and consequences...and, as they say, "don't do the crime if you can't do the time." was it a small lapse in judgment? that is how you perceive it. as long as you perceive it as "bad luck" rather than as a chance you took without fully assessing the possible downside consequences, you will not learn from this experience. this is what other posters mean by "taking responsibility."
you made a mistake; you made an error in judgment; you got caught. was there no mistake if you had not gotten caught? ah...now there is a very interesting question which, when answered, says oodles about your character. you see, because you may have to do some harder things in nursing than that. you may have to face the fact that you could lose your license by 'fessing up to an error you made, an error that, if not corrected, could cost a patient their life. so, you may very well have to decide: am i willing to place my career on the line in order to do the right thing by this patient? or am i going to "try and get away with it."
your attitude, if your bon is willing to take things on a case-by-case basis, will mean everything. if you view it as a bit of "bad luck" then you will not have been seen as having learned from your experience; after all, "bad luck" is out of your control, right? but this was really in your control. you have to admit to yourself that you were in control and you made a decision. do other people get away with worse things (say, oj simpson?)? you betcha. but you know what? that doesn't have anything to do with you. the world isn't fair. actually, the world is sooo unfair that you need to vigorously pursue doing the right thing so you can reduce your exposure to the unfairness of the world, to be caught up in the unfairness.
(i don't, and i won't, submit "fictional" tax returns; i submit a tax return which is accurate according to irs guidelines as i believe they are applied. to me, having seen people go thru tax audits, it isn't worth the aggravation to cheat on my taxes. actually, as i have gone thru life, my reasons for not cheating on my taxes actually goes far beyond not having to deal with audit frustration; i start seeing the whole picture--because if i cheat, someone else has to make up what i cheat, someone who may be, in fact, far less able to do so.)
i don't know how much ethics you have been exposed to in nursing school; i think it's a rare nursing program that doesn't cover ethics--because there are so many ethical questions in medicine, and there are more and more every day. these are difficult, gnarly questions, without easy answers. some may pit loyalty to friends vs. responsibility to patients.
well...i could go on and on...but i've probably already pwe'd, so i will stop here.
what i hope for you is the sobriety and step to maturity that makes this a lesson in life for you, instead of some chance event. and i hope that that will enable you to take the nclex. i wish you luck, and i really do believe it is in your hands. if people believe you have learned your lesson, they may help you find ways to get what you want that otherwise would not seem possible. there is probably even a greater need for people with character than there is for rns.
nursefirst
this is my favorite post of this topic.
to the op: look at this post very closely as it contains many nuggets of wisdom (without any aftertaste). think about what he has to say, and then think about it again. and again. perhaps it will bring to mind principles that you may have overlooked in the ethics course you took in school (i hope your school required one).
to nursefirst: you sound like an exceptional nurse! bravo for taking the time to write that wonderful post. all the best!
...that you have to go thru this. maybe veridican is right; maybe it's your "karma" or "fate" or whatever that this happened to you. i remember several years ago getting involved in a discussion about whether someone who had been busted for dealing drugs (and, again, with a "chance" circumstance that they were caught doing this--normally didn't do it, but ... whatever.) who was in the process of applying to medical school.
i also remember meeting a medical student, back in the late '60s, who offered me a joint to smoke. i remember thinking, wow...all that work to get into medical school, the work in medical school, could go up in smoke if he were caught (i think this might have been when marijuana possession was a felony...got at least one person i know of out of going to viet nam--a bit ironic, considering the number of soldiers who became addicted to drugs over there.).
in one emt class i took the instructor was very clear about what kind of risks you take by even being in the same location where marijuana (for instance) is being smoked (like having your emt cert removed and denied from being an emt subsequently.)
what has happened to you is a wake up call. i would say that most people, in growing up, get a few wake up calls. growing up in the sixties, there are any number of things which i did which could have drastically interfered with my future; i'm not proud of that, but it is a fact. fortunately for me, i managed to straighten my life out before anything drastic happened.
you needed a wake up call to bring you along the road of maturity, of recognizing that actions have risks and consequences...and, as they say, "don't do the crime if you can't do the time." was it a small lapse in judgment? that is how you perceive it. as long as you perceive it as "bad luck" rather than as a chance you took without fully assessing the possible downside consequences, you will not learn from this experience. this is what other posters mean by "taking responsibility."
you made a mistake; you made an error in judgment; you got caught. was there no mistake if you had not gotten caught? ah...now there is a very interesting question which, when answered, says oodles about your character. you see, because you may have to do some harder things in nursing than that. you may have to face the fact that you could lose your license by 'fessing up to an error you made, an error that, if not corrected, could cost a patient their life. so, you may very well have to decide: am i willing to place my career on the line in order to do the right thing by this patient? or am i going to "try and get away with it."
your attitude, if your bon is willing to take things on a case-by-case basis, will mean everything. if you view it as a bit of "bad luck" then you will not have been seen as having learned from your experience; after all, "bad luck" is out of your control, right? but this was really in your control. you have to admit to yourself that you were in control and you made a decision. do other people get away with worse things (say, oj simpson?)? you betcha. but you know what? that doesn't have anything to do with you. the world isn't fair. actually, the world is sooo unfair that you need to vigorously pursue doing the right thing so you can reduce your exposure to the unfairness of the world, to be caught up in the unfairness.
(i don't, and i won't, submit "fictional" tax returns; i submit a tax return which is accurate according to irs guidelines as i believe they are applied. to me, having seen people go thru tax audits, it isn't worth the aggravation to cheat on my taxes. actually, as i have gone thru life, my reasons for not cheating on my taxes actually goes far beyond not having to deal with audit frustration; i start seeing the whole picture--because if i cheat, someone else has to make up what i cheat, someone who may be, in fact, far less able to do so.)
i don't know how much ethics you have been exposed to in nursing school; i think it's a rare nursing program that doesn't cover ethics--because there are so many ethical questions in medicine, and there are more and more every day. these are difficult, gnarly questions, without easy answers. some may pit loyalty to friends vs. responsibility to patients.
well...i could go on and on...but i've probably already pwe'd, so i will stop here.
what i hope for you is the sobriety and step to maturity that makes this a lesson in life for you, instead of some chance event. and i hope that that will enable you to take the nclex. i wish you luck, and i really do believe it is in your hands. if people believe you have learned your lesson, they may help you find ways to get what you want that otherwise would not seem possible. there is probably even a greater need for people with character than there is for rns.
HI, I want to thank all the nurses who took the time to advise and also to judge or crucify, that's okay. I mentioned before yeah, I made a wrong choice and will pay the consequences. I also will have a chance to learn a lesson in my life that's for sure. I am positive that nothing will stop me from achieving my goals, and yeah, I agree I should have known better, but it happened and now I have to face it.
In the state , I am in they evaluate case by case , and then after analizying your efforts and work , they make a decision. I will certainly work hard and prove to myself and them that I can be a great nurse, passionate, professional who can deal with this problem and work in the same manner as any reliable nurse would perform. For sure, since that day I cannot see a beer. Today, it was the last day of clinical my friends went out had some beers, and I had diet coke. It's gonna be a long process , and I know it was wrong. One thing is right many people die because of drinking, luckily I didn't cause any accidents and nothing happened, but it could have happened.
I know that it won't happen again because I cannot see myself driving and drinking, so people are right sometimes things must happen so you realize what you are doing, and fix them in the appropriate time. I also know that there are those ones who like to especulate and yeah never drive again, never become a nurse, never live again, all bla, bla, bla.
Yes the judgement was completely wrong,but there is a chance for improvement and learning, I know exactly the law, and will pay the price.
I wish you all the best, and please I do appreciate all opinions, I understand I am gonna get the ones that I might expect, that's okay, it's life, opinions should be discussed, and please for the ones who cannot have a good discussion , and try to do personal attacks, don't waste your time, get a life.
BETSRN
1,378 Posts
You know, I looked back at the age of the original poster. He is over 30 years old! It's time to grow up. You are no kid! As a nurse, you'll be dealing with people's lives: a huge cost when a mistake is made. I like the post about ethics. You need to do some serious thinking and take a couple of ethics courses. I hope, if you see this as a choice you should NOT have made, then you be allowed to take the exams. If you see this as "bad luck", you truly need to look for another career. Nursing doesn't need people who already walk on the edge before they start.