What if you were sick or injured, but found yourself being tended to by an inept nurse or caregiver? Would you feel comfortable knowing someone with a criminal record or a drug addiction was administering your medication or monitoring your vital signs? How about a family member or friend in that situation?
Disturbingly enough, a recent story in the Los Angeles Times revealed that individuals completely unqualified for positions in the nursing industry are being placed in care centers and hospitals by medical staffing agencies that require little in the way of background screenings and medical certifications. As a result, unqualified people are being signed up to provide care to some of the most vulnerable segments of the population.
A $4 billion dollar industry, agencies that specialize in staffing hospitals with temporary or contracted personnel find themselves engaged in a lucrative venture. Although there are many professional agencies that offer trusted and qualified personnel, others cut corners on background checks or forgo them altogether in the interest of keeping as many people in the field to earn as much money as possible. Often, the individuals who slip by have a variety of criminal charges both in and out of the medical industry.
The executive director of the Arizona State Board of Nursing, Joey Ridenour, agrees that there is a serious issue at hand which needs to be addressed: “I think it’s easier to hide in the registries. Some [firms] just sign them up.”
Firms have been found to have hired out nurses with past breaches of conduct such as ignoring patients, sleeping on the job, dereliction of duty, looting prescription drugs, theft of patient property, calling in illegal prescriptions, providing faulty or inaccurate medical information to doctors, erratic behavior, mental imbalance and more.
The list of off-duty conduct of many of these people is equally terrible. Charges ranging from DUI’s, carrying concealed weapons, assault with a deadly weapon, theft, and even prostitution are among some of the marks on individuals records that were turned up. The list provided by the L.A. Times reads more like the rap sheet of career criminals rather than the orderlies or nurses one would think would be approved to attend to the sick and infirm.
The nursing staffing industry nationwide is composed of an estimated 3,000-6,000 agencies nationwide. Standards run the gamut from publicly traded businesses and companies to individuals doing business out of their homes. There’s no real standardization at all for screening, backgrounds checks or verification of one’s eligibility to be a nursing practitioner. Bad seeds who can’t work anywhere else find easy opportunities to be rehired again and again by leapfrogging from one agency to another.
Nursing supervisor Sandra Thompson who is employed at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley was quoted by the L.A. Times saying “A lot of them are really bad nurses. Sometimes I see them here at Northridge and and think ‘I wonder how long before I see them over at Sherman Oaks?’”
Compounding the issue is that health care institutions that are under budget and time constraints simply can’t double check the temps they are being presented with. Often the word of the agency has to be taken for what it is worth. And as mentioned before, a nationwide nursing shortage means that often a hospital is forced to work with the staff available to them. It’s like buying a used car on the spot without having a qualified mechanic take a look under the hood first.
The health care industry, which is literally vital to the well being of this nation’s population, needs to assert itself and address this problem. Otherwise, the entire system risks being undermined from within by unskilled, incompetent and criminal individuals placed there by equally uncaring individuals running these fly by night agencies. Perhaps individual states and the staffing industry could work together to develop standards with regards to background checks for employees working in this field.
Tags: background checks, employment background checks, nurse, staffing agency, temporary staffing
