We had an interesting situation on our unit and I would like to get some the opinions from some of you regarding this issue. I work on a 34 bed med surg ortho unit as the charge nurse. We had a CNA on our shift (male from Nigeria) who we LOVED. He was a wonderful employee and very fun to work with. He was always getting thank you cards from patients and families and patients would come up to see him after discharge to let them know how he was doing. His name always came up on our patient satisfaction scores. He was just great to work with.
The one problem that he had was that he was a bit of a flirt. He was a good looking guy and he would flirt with anyone who would flirt back. Most of us just told him to lay off and stop being a pest and he would stop. No problem. Some of the staff in the hospital took him up on his offers and he had quite a rep in the hospital as a guy who got "lucky" with the women. But you know, as long as he was doing it on his own time, I did not care what he was doing.
Well the following situation came up. We had a man in the hospital for a while with a very nasty infected dog bite on his hand. His wife stayed with him at the hospital. He was a real nice man and all the staff felt very friendly toward him and his wife and got to know them well because he was there for about three weeks. The patient and his wife became very close with the CNA in question. He would always stop in and talk with this patient and his family, even if he was not assigned to that area.
One day I come to work and I find out that this CNA is on suspension for investigation of sexual harassment of this patients wife. The allegation was that the CNA was flirting with her in front of her husband but this was not the main issue. The wife stated that the CNA had called her on her cell phone and told her that he was very attracted to her and that he wanted to take her away from her husband. The wife told her husband about this. The husband/patient waited about 4 days before he spoke with anyone about this. The manager and HR got together with the CNA and he stated that she had called him and there had been several calls between the two of them. The CNA said that the wife had asked him for his cell number so she could call him and check on the status of her husband. So they asked him to produce his cell phone records and he was unable to produce them. If they could find evidence that she had called him, he would not have been terminated. We are union and he is filing a grievance but I think the termination is going to stand because of the fact that it involved a family member of a patient and that he got her phone number off the patients chart.
I would be interested to know what you guys think about this. Would you have terminated him for this one incident?
