Will they contact State Board

It's completely possible for a diabetic's sugar to drop that much after NPH, particularly a "brittle" diabetic, so there's really no way to assume that the wrong med was given, and therefore nothing to report. Even if it was a known med error, med errors aren't typically reported to the BON unless there was negligence involved. Best practice these days is to deal with med errors non-punitively and to search for ways to prevent it in the future. (Bar code scanning).

if she was going to hold, she needed to call the provider. This patient may need her basal rate constant; holding the regular can rebound the patients sugar into a higher amount, resulting in a higher dose of Regular insulin.

She may have been fired for not collaborating with the provider, hence practicing our side her scope in some instances

The Nurse wasn't holding the med, the patient was refusing the med, in the view of a BON those are two very different things. Policies when a patient refuses a med, in terms of notifying the provider, are facility specific and there is no blanket rule on this that a BON enforces.

Does your facility have a policy for what happens if an error is made? If every nurse was fired for errors such as this and then "blacklisted" by the state board - we wouldn't have any nurses! Sounds pretty fishy to me. But as stated earlier, if you are in a RTW state you can be fired for anything or nothing at all.

And I agree that med errors should be dealt with non punitively. We have all made mistakes - I am so sorry to hear this. It doesn't even sound like she did anything wrong.

Ok, so they can't do anything to her license then? I told her that being fired, which she shouldn't have been, was more than enough punishment! Then 1 of our friends said she had to let future jobs know she was fired for this and the board will maybe suspend her license temp or make her do refresher courses. Do you think this is true?

Only the BON can say if anything will or won't happen to her license, and the BON can do pretty much whatever the want, but in general, a single med error without willful disregard or gross negligence does not result in action against your license or really any sort of action by the BON.

I don't think the problem is a medication error, I think the problem is the employer thinks the nurse is lying about the dose and type of insulin. Lying is considered wilful misconduct, instead of warning her, they terminated her for cause. Employers are obligated to report termination for cause to the BON because it is part of protecting the public.

The Nurse wasn't holding the med, the patient was refusing the med, in the view of a BON those are two very different things. Policies when a patient refuses a med, in terms of notifying the provider, are facility specific and there is no blanket rule on this that a BON enforces.

I realized that...hence the "if" statement.

I read this between post work and sleep.

I don't think the problem is a medication error I think the problem is the employer thinks the nurse is lying about the dose and type of insulin. Lying is considered wilful misconduct, instead of warning her, they terminated her for cause. Employers are obligated to report termination for cause to the BON because it is part of protecting the public.[/quote']

Now this makes sense...since we were not there, the whole 12 v. 19 units and writing it down for 19 units and NOT the 12 made me confused when I read this post (with one eye open, lol) last night; maybe a little suspicious...no offense, I totally understand how insulins can get mixed up, etc; however, since we don't know the whole story, who's to say what REALLY happened???

Like I said in my post OP, if she has malpractice insurance, call the provider, your friends needs to read up on the nurse practice act, etc...

Lesson Learned: HAVE MALPRACTICE INSURANCE.