I read a post last night that got me thinking. It was by Hppy describing her sobriety & a description of her history with the monitoring program.
Hppy states that she was an alcoholic whose depression got so bad that she attempted to end her life. She was placed in a monitoring and this may have helped save her life. She also in my opinion correctly described the financial links to the rehab industry that soaks millions from nurses who can't afford to pay their fees. Hppy is one of the few nurses I know who had a severe substance abuse that these programs have helped.
In the past couple months I've seen 4 nurses from my small group get either thrown out or quit my monitoring program after being in it for years for either relapses or minor rule infractions that occurred while they were sober. These are the 9% of nurses in my state that don't make it for either financial reasons or due to the fact that they actually have substance abuse issues that got the best of them. These people will never be allowed to be a nurse again. These nurses probably helped thousands of sick people over the years and were an asset to the profession and were thrown away like last weeks leftovers. These are the nurses who are desperate for help. The strong and devoted like Hppy make but from what I've seen most others don't. The majority like me that are most likely to make it probably didn't have a substance abuse issue to begin with and are just being fleeced and pushed around for our period in Purgatory. We do what we have to. We go to meetings and eat the goodies and play with our phone & all the other stuff. We know that the pee test awaits & that's enough for us not to use. Its not enough for the truly addicted. In the army when a fellow solider died we used to toast them with a title of an old poem about those struck down too early "For the Fallen" and as soon as I'm able I'll raise a toast to my fellow nurses who had the same fate. I rejoice in Hppys success but am saddened that so many were done in by the punitive mechanisms in these programs.
