Pre-Employment Screening

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Specializes in RN.

Hello all,

I recently took a break from nursing due to my mental health being in a really bad place. I went back home to California to visit some family. While I was there I was talked into smoking THC a few times because I was convinved by my nurse friends there that because it is legal in the state that I was in I wouldn't get in trouble in my home state of Florida. A few weeks later when I returned from my trip I scheduled an interview that had me do a pre-employment drug test. I pee'd in the cup but had a bad feeling that I had failed so I did not sign the chain-of-custody papers to send it to the lab. If I did indeed fail, can they still use that sample to report me to the BON? If yes, of course I will cooperate and take accountability. I know now that I shouldn't have smoked weed. It was a really stupid decision and I am freaking out.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).

There is an important lesson here:  NEVER take the word of "friends" that smoking weed is OK!  Especially "friends" that don't live in your state.  A true friend would not want you to do anything that might endanger employment.

Check the FL laws on weed.  If it is legal in FL, then most employers probably won't care if you smoke it, as long as you don't come to work high.

HOWEVER, every employer has their own policy on this.  While weed is legal in CA, federal agencies are not OK with cannabis showing up on a drug screen.  You should check the drug screen policies of places you apply to - these may be on their website.  The weed will eventually get out of your system, but it is going to take awhile, generally up to 30 days for urine.

When looking for a new job, just don't do any street drugs, to be on the safe side.

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State legal doesn't mean a health care professional can test positive fit it without consequence.  New York doesn't test for it as far as I know unless you are suspected of being impaired. 

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
Healer555 said:

State legal doesn't mean a health care professional can test positive fit it without consequence.  New York doesn't test for it as far as I know unless you are suspected of being impaired. 

Good point.  It is important to know the individual employer's policy on this.  I'm in CA, and most places don't care if the person tests positive for weed, as long as they don't show up to work impaired.  But there are exceptions.

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Specializes in School Nursing.

This is definitely an important lesson.  My mother-in-law told me to use CBD oil (she has a masters in bioinformatics) for headaches, I told her that is was a very unregulated market and some THC might be in the oil so I don't want to risk my nursing licsense. She told me not to believe everything I read. 😒  Am I going to risk it? Nope.

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How did you get out of signing it? not a lawyer but I'd guess you wouldn't get in trouble if you didn't sign confirming it was yours/hadn't been tampered with etc? They do verify your ID before you give the sample though so not sure. I would have thought they would've thrown the sample out if you refused to sign and then reported it as "refusing to give a sample"/fail

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TIMFY said:

How did you get out of signing it? not a lawyer but I'd guess you wouldn't get in trouble if you didn't sign confirming it was yours/hadn't been tampered with etc? They do verify your ID before you give the sample though so not sure. I would have thought they would've thrown the sample out if you refused to sign and then reported it as "refusing to give a sample"/fail

It would be good though for the OP if they didn't do the test though.  Maybe even better if they refused to test. 

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Employers in the state I live in follow federal laws regarding pot - even if legal in the state since it's against federal law its a no go.

Depending on how much, how long OP smoked it would depend on if it showed up in routine drug test. 

I wondered too how OP was able to refuse to sign the forms at the testing as that is usually a requirement or as others have said sample isn't used. Also a huge flag for the potential employer so it may have been better to just go w/the testing then deal w/the negative outcome, if any, once results returned.

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