What To Expect

Nurses Recovery

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Hello All,

Long story short I recently failed a urine screen at the hospital to which I am currently employed. I overslept the morning of one of my shifts. When I showed up to work I was informed that the Employee Health and Wellness department wanted to check me out, and that’s when I was asked to perform a urine test. I wasn’t intoxicated at the time I was just exhausted from the three 12’s prior. I cannot lie, my test lit up like a Christmas tree. My college party habit’s just haven't died down yet, and now I’m paying the price. I am just overwhelmed that my stupid decisions have led to this. I have yet to meet with HR or really anyone about the issue and I just want to know what to expect so I can develop some sort of a plan

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They will probably send the urine off for levels testing (how high and how recently you used/drank). If they are recent enough and high enough you could be given the option to self-report to your state monitoring program or be turned over to the BON.

Regardless, contact an attorney experienced in BON cases in advance. Do not wait...

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Specializes in OR.

And say NOTHING to any investigator/program person/anyone about anything you may have done or not done or any prior diagnoses of anxiety, etc. until you have contacted that attorney. You can’t change whatever that urine result is, but everything that you say from this moment on can dictate the next several years of your life. You are likely facing monitoring. It’s highly unlikely that the attorney can get you out of that but they can hopefully shield you from the more unsavory aspects of these programs. Read through these threads....the horror factor of what is done to people in the guise of ‘recovery’ is exponential. That retainer is well worth the expense.

Need help finding a good one...google TAANA and your state....will give you a list of lawyers that concentrate in just this area. You want to be sure you have one that knows licensing defense law and is aware of the crap that is known to go on in these programs.

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Admit nothing. See a lawyer.

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Being an Ohio nurse as well, get a lawyer now. Do not talk to anyone from the board without your lawyer present. Comply with everything work asks of you. Even the sucky stuff. Do not surrender your license, no matter how bad they scare you.

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Specializes in ICU, trauma, neuro.

Great advice:

a. Admit nothing.

b. Get an attorney experienced in medical/nursing license law. Everything, from chain of custody, to possible contamination and false positives may possibly be contested. If it were a union facility, then I wouldn't have even taken the test w/o my rep. being present. Often in a union facility the hospital must show that they enact policies in a consistent manner.

c. If you did in fact take illegal substances stop now. Not even cannabis not even CBD oil (since it can have THC levels that will make you positive on some UDS tests). In retrospect, you would have been better off when you showed up and they demanded a test to make up an excuse such as a home emergency that required you to leave immediately. It may have cost you your job, but your license would be in less jeopardy. Say nothing to anyone save for your attorney or family members.

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.
18 hours ago, myoglobin said:

In retrospect, you would have been better off when you showed up and they demanded a test to make up an excuse such as a home emergency that required you to leave immediately. It may have cost you your job, but your license would be in less jeopardy. Say nothing to anyone save for your attorney or family members.

This is actually not the best idea either, especially if you're not expecting your drug screen to come back positive. A refusal to take a drug screen for whatever reason - even if a later drug screen ended up being negative - is often construed as admission of guilt and you'll end up in front of the BON or in monitoring anyway. Especially in the current climate of hyper-awareness about addiction.

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3 hours ago, dirtyhippiegirl said:

This is actually not the best idea either, especially if you're not expecting your drug screen to come back positive. A refusal to take a drug screen for whatever reason - even if a later drug screen ended up being negative - is often construed as admission of guilt and you'll end up in front of the BON or in monitoring anyway. Especially in the current climate of hyper-awareness about addiction.

Not always true! With a good attorney on your side, a no test result can be better than a positive test. It is harder to dispute a positive test result, as opposed to a family emergency or whatever the reason a test was declined.

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