Incompetent Nurses Avoid Scrutiny
Incompetent nurses working in Georgia may have a history of malpractice which is unknown to the institutions and people employing them. A recent investigation reported in USA Today has disclosed the fact that communication among state licensing agencies which supposedly protect patients from dangerous nurses is frighteningly lacking and in many cases, nonexistent.
The article gives as an example the matter of Nurse Craig Peske who was fired from a hospital in Wausau, Wis., in 2007 after stealing the powerful painkiller Dilaudid.
Hospital officials reported him to Wisconsin nursing regulators and alerted police.
Six months later, Peske was charged with six felony counts of narcotics possession. But by that time, he had used a special "multistate" license to get a job as a traveling nurse at a hospital 1,200 miles away in North Carolina.
Peske was later convicted of two felony drug charges.
The ease of Peske's move demonstrates the gaps in regulatory efforts nationwide to keep nurses from avoiding the consequences of misconduct by simply moving across state lines.
The two states in which Peske worked are part of a 24-state compact created to help get good nurses to areas where they are needed most. Under the decade-old partnership, a license obtained in a nurse's home state allows access to work in the other compact states. Georgia is not a member of the compact.
The Georgia Secretary of State, like may others, maintains a database of nurses licensed to practice in this sate with disciplinary actions noted. However, in order to check the complete background of a nurse one would have to search all 50 states.
An investigation by the non-profit news organization ProPublica found that the pact also has allowed nurses with records of misconduct to put patients in jeopardy. In some cases, nurses have retained clean multistate licenses after at least one compact state had banned them. They have ignored their patients' needs, stolen their pain medication, forgotten crucial tests or missed changes in their condition, records show.
Critics say the compact may actually multiply the risk to patients. There is no central licensing for the compact, so policing nurses is left to the vigilance of member states.
With the advent of modern technology it should be a rather simple task to establish a centralized registry to which each state’s nursing licensing board could post information regarding findings of misconduct or malpractice by nurses. The existence of such a database made available to hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care organizations could potentially prevent harm to many innocent persons.
Weaknesses in the state-based system for disciplining problem nurses have surfaced as a public health issue during the past year. California, for example, revamped its nursing board and its executive officer resigned after reports of ineffective oversight that put patients at risk.
The state recently discovered that 3,500 of its nurses had been disciplined by other states but had kept clean California licenses.
Nationwide, nursing shortages have forced hospitals to rely on traveling or temporary nurses. Nurses working in one state now take medical-advice phone calls or use teleconferencing
