What is Abandonment?

You must be at work and take responsibility for a patient. No call/no show and not coming to work on your day off can not be patient abandonment.

That may be job abandonment, a fireable offense, but not patient abandonment which is reportable to the BON.

You have to have assumed care in order to abandon a patient. If you don't take assignment you cannot abandon a patient. Although I've heard managers use the term "abandonment" to mean something different. Your BON will have a full definition.

It can be classified as job abandonment for unemployment purposes (depends on state) and can be any job(not just nursing). Patient abandonment is a totally different bird and your BoN can give exact definition

Job abandonment, yes. Patient abandonment doesn't happen until you've taken report from offgoing shift and then leave your patients with no one to care for them. At least that's my understanding

Not coming to work is not considered patient abandonment although some employers like to threaten as if it is.

The only exception in very rare cases is if it was an unofficial walk out or sick out, which are illegal and considered patient abandonment because you are not allowed to strike if it would endanger patients. People would be legally mandated to work. I say unofficial, because a union knows it is not allowed to do this and all strikes have to be done with enough notice to the hospital to be able to find other nurses to work.

11 hours ago, Kooky Korky said:

Makes striking pretty ineffective, I would think.

but abandonment - Check with an attorney or 2 in your state for accuracy, just to be totally sure

It is still effective and costs the hospital a lot of money and hassle. To walk out without having anyone to care for critical patients is essentially killing them.

On 2/12/2019 at 6:37 AM, nycmoon said:

Is being a No Show / No Call abandonment? If a nurse simply fails to show up to work for a period of time?

No call/no show is job abandonment.

You have to have accepted an assignment in order to abandon it. So the nurse who called in sick from a bar ten minutes after her shift started may be subject to other disciplinary issues, she didn't abandon her patients. Two weeks later, when she wandered off the unit at lunch time, and didn't come back -- THAT was patient abandonment.