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Last summer in Toledo, Ohio, Susan Fudacz was waiting for a kidney being donated by her younger brother, Paul Fudacz, Jr.  They were a perfect match and Susan was excited to get a new lease on life with her brother’s gift. When Susan woke from anesthesia, she noticed that she had no incision.  It turns out that a nurse mistakenly […]

When I started in nursing, I heard an expression:  “Nurses eat their young!” “Nurses eat their young!”  I could not believe it!  How could nurses eat their young?  What does this even mean? An interesting thing about the expression is that almost every nurse you talk to will know the saying.  I Googled the phrase and found that it is […]

In nursing school, they never taught us about the specific laws that we are required to follow to keep our license safe as a nurse.  They taught us about ethics.  I vaguely recall the Nurse Practice Act from which the most important advice from that is “Don’t have sex with a patient,” which I would not have done any way. […]

When I was a nurse, I did not want to share my thoughts on ways to improve patient care and now I realize I was not alone.  The Wall Street Journal recently published a study showing that 33% of nurses in a New York hospital said that they withheld ideas from their nursing supervisors.  Another 29% said that they “sometimes” withheld ideas […]

This is the end to a long drawn out saga. Many of you have read my previous articles that Anne Mitchel, R.N. and Vicki Galle, R.N. filed an anonymous complaint with the Texas Medical Board, complaining of a pattern of substandard care provided by a certain medical doctor, Dr. Rolando Arafilies. Both nurses were in performance improvement positions at Winkler […]

I am frequently asked by nurses how to protect their nursing licenses. Here are five simple things that a nurse can do, which many nurses told me they did not know, to protect her license. Notify the Board of any change of address. Notify the Board of all disciplinary action on your renewal application. Document on each employment application whether […]

Kimberly Hiatt had been a registered nurse for twenty five (25) years. She worked at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Unfortunately, on September 14, 2010, she was taking care of a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit and accidently miscalculated the dose of Calcium chloride and gave the baby ten times the ordered dosage. Ms. Hiatt was escorted from the […]

As many of you have read in the news, Anne Mitchell, R.N. and Vicki Galle, R.N. filed an anonymous complaint with the Texas Medical Board, complaining of a pattern of substandard care provided by a certain medical doctor (Dr. Arafiles).  The physician then asked a friend and patient who was the sheriff to find out who filed the complaint.  It […]

As many of you have read, Officer William Phillips, age 32, was killed Thursday September 30, 2010 at 12:45 a.m when a vehicle struck his bicycle while he was training with two other officers along U.S. 40 near Knightstown, Indiana. The riders were wearing reflective helmets and gear. The person whose vehicle hit Officer Phillips fled the scene. It turns […]

Nurses, welcome to “Ask a Nurse Attorney.” This section is designed for licensed nurses to ask questions to a nurse attorney. If you have a question that you would like to have answered, please feel free to e-mail Lorie@brownlaw1.com. If your question is selected, it will appear in the upcoming issues of Nursing Focus. Dear Nurse Attorney, Recently, a physician […]