Nursing student taking drugs

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What would you do if you found out that a fellow nursing student is smoking marijuana?

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By your logic, if I'm in my home in bed I have the POTENTIAL to get hit by a car that veers off the road and into my home...so why shouldn't I just go sleep in the street?

Risks are all around us, yes. But drug use impairs mental abilities, thus increasing the risk that a healthcare worker will harm a patient.

No this is incorrect.

THC has no notable effect on the brain after the euphoria is removed.

http://www.hnrc.ucsd.edu/publication...348art2003.pdf

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Woops brother hehe

I'd be ok being a "sister" but I feel more comfortable in my own underwear...lol :wink2:

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Ok.. I've seen some pretty absurd things said in this thread. :banghead: I wouldn't even know where to begin to address some of the stuff.. yikes.

If this student was not smoking right before clinical or during clinical, it's absolutely none of your business. It's not your job to police what others do on their time. If you 'knew for a fact' that someone was smoking pot (on the weekends, per say..away from school), you would still report them because 'it's against the rules?' Oh give me a break. Speeding is against the rules/illegal.. you going to report everyone who does that too? That could put people at risk. Might as well turn yourself in. Worry about YOURSELF and no one else, unless you physically see someone high/drunk ON THE JOB and with a patient.

As long as nurses are responsible and don't use before/during patient contact, I see absolutely no problem with it. Just like someone else wrote, illegal doesn't make it necessarily bad, nor does something being legal automatically make it good. Smoking marijuana is far less harmful to a person than alcohol. How many people have died from a direct result of alcohol? How many from direct use of MJ?

Also, I have yet to see, experience, or hear others say that they have gotten 'tainted/unpure' MJ, and I know a lot of people who smoke. The worst thing your MJ is going to be tainted with is the soil/nutrients it's grown with. If you would (BabyLady), can you provide a link to research or facts that shows that most MJ isn't pure?

All in all.. keep to yourself, keep your nose clean.. no one likes a tattle-tale or an orifice kisser. You will make many more enemies being a tattle-tale, I guarantee it. Sorry for the long post, end rant. lol :p

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By your logic, if I'm in my home in bed I have the POTENTIAL to get hit by a car that veers off the road and into my home...so why shouldn't I just go sleep in the street?

Risks are all around us, yes. But drug use impairs mental abilities, thus increasing the risk that a healthcare worker will harm a patient.

I drink. I'm married to a Brit and love nothing more than to hang out in the pub on Sunday afternoon and watch the football (soccer) on Setanta Sports. (I cheer for Chelsea only because he's a Liverpool supporter - any Premier League fans will totally get that!)

Unless I show up loaded for a shift, how does my love of a good pint impair my mental abilities?

Sorry to drag up this post, but this got me. Perhaps part of it has been lost in translation.

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Honestly after reading a few threads about the drama during nursing school I find it hard to believe that so many people say they wouldn't report somebody if they knew for a fact, especially if it was an enemy.

I would never in my life expose that kind of information to anybody I went to school with and not expect to get reported, tested, and kicked out...

I have to wonder if any school, unless you showed up impaired, could actually get away with it without risking a fat lawsuit and a phone call from, I don't know, the ACLU about barging into people's off time. Seriously. (Unless it was completely written out in black and white - and even then, it could be construed as hearsay and create a massive legal quagmire. If you were arrested for it, or busted by campus police, then I'd say that's totally different.)

I've smoked pot - admittedly, not in the last decade - and unless they show up for a shift loaded, I really don't care what people do.

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I'd be ok being a "sister" but I feel more comfortable in my own underwear...lol :wink2:

In a word, dude - boy shorts. :D:D:smokin::smokin:

What a long, strange trip it's been. . .

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Ha! I love how we're pretending that America is the only country capable of doing credible research....

There are so many things wrong with this post, its not even funny. First of all, most marijuana sold in the USA is "pure", as you call it...we're not talking about coke or meth here. I'm not saying it doesn't happen sometimes, but it's definitely not the norm. If a dealer soaked his bud in something, that would cause people NOT to buy it. There are many different strains of marijuana that have been developed over the years through selective breeding, and they have a range of different potencies and subjective effects. Dealers don't get more business by adulterating their stock, then get people to buy by getting "good $#!@". Second, no one mentioned anything about pregnant women. We know for a fact that nicotine and alcohol have teratogenic effects, but that doesn't mean we should outlaw them. Its common sense that you should stay away from most anything that puts your body chemistry into an altered state when you're pregnant. Third, the idea that is rare to find someone who only smokes MJ and doesn't use any other drugs is simply ludicrous. I know a lot of people like to say that marijuana is a "gateway drug" but this is simply not true. The main evidence people offer up for the gateway drug theory is that something like 9 out of 10 people who use hard drugs tried marijuana first. This doesn't even mean they used MJ regularly before moving to hard drugs. It simply means that they at least smoked it once [as more than 40% of high school seniors have]. Furthermore, I would like to think that educated people such as nurses understand that correlation does not establish causality. If 9 out of 10 hard drug users tried MJ first, then I guarantee you that 99 out of 100 drank alcohol before their first line of coke or injection of heroin. Does that mean drinking alcohol causes hard drug use?

The fact is, there have been vast amounts of solid, credible research done over the years, both domestically and abroad, government funded, and private, and they all say the same thing. The negative effects of both short and long term use are no worse than alcohol, and it is no worse for society. Every single legitimate study ever done will tell you that marijuana is by far the safest drug you could possibly use [this includes alcohol and nicotine], and that is a fact. [i think the fact that there is no known lethal dose should probably tell you something].

Again, I'm just saying, you should get your facts straight.

ETA:

[This isn't meant as a personal attack in any way. Sorry if you took it that way.]

From everything I see on TV, read in the papers - nicotine is the world's largest gateway drug. They're not busting their tails to make THAT completely illegal, are they?

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Specializes in NICU, Post-partum.
No this is incorrect.

THC has no notable effect on the brain after the euphoria is removed.

http://www.hnrc.ucsd.edu/publication...348art2003.pdf

As the study you sourced reveals (and even STATED), you can never make a broad conclusion based on ONE study.

The problem with the regular cannabis users that were used in comparison, is that we have no idea of what their level of cognitive functioning was BEFORE they started using cannabis...everyone else in the study were non-users.

I'm guessing you haven't had statistics yet, when you take it, this will make more sense.

The fact remains that if you regularly or even irregularly use MJ while working in the nursing profession, you'll be out of a job once your drug test comes back positive.

School is a different matter...you have a legal right to go to a public school, you are not working independently as a nursing student in a hospital, and unless a classmate showed up high or reeking of MJ I would say nothing.

The problem will take care of itself when they apply for a job.

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.....

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
What would you do if you found out that a fellow nursing student is smoking marijuana?

Tell them puff puff give!!!

I kid I kid :p

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Tell them puff puff give!!!

I kid I kid :p

:clphnds:

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