I recently Googled to find out what has been going on with Amanda Trujillo's case. I had been aware that there had been a postponement of a board hearing, but had not heard anything else. The news is: 1) The case has been settled with a consent decree with Amanda agreeing to a year of probation and the findings of the Board of Nursing. The facts of the case and a copy of the decree can be seen at http://thenerdynurse.com/2013/01/update-on-the-amanda-trujillo-case-doing-the-right-thing-can-be-subjective.html Thanks to the Nerdy Nurse for an excellent post that the rest of the nurse-online world is curiously quiet about.
It seems that Nurse Trujillo was not truthful in her on line letters and posts. I know I responded strongly when I first heard of the matter, posting here on a blog centered on fiction informed by my experiences. My response and the outrage of it was due to the fact that I and many other nurses have first hand experience of abuse and assault by physicians which has been aided and abetted by hospitals and the powers that be. That caused me to uncritically rush to a judgement.
It is true that such behavior by physicians is less common and less tolerated now. I think that this is often more a reflection on the difficulty and expense of recruiting experienced nurses than anything else. A hospital I know of which was notorius for outrageous behavior by its surgeons recently required all their surgeons to take a class on anger management on pain of losing their block time in the OR. While this is encouraging, one must also recognize the enormous double standard: Nurses are fired on the spot for behaviors that are free of consequences for physicians. And Boards of Nursing can be used as weapons against nurses.
In the end, I feel that justice has been done in this case. While some of the Board's findings have a feel of "piling on", a year of probation is proportional to the actual offense, and the Board could have been much, much more punitive.
It seems that Nurse Trujillo was not truthful in her on line letters and posts. I know I responded strongly when I first heard of the matter, posting here on a blog centered on fiction informed by my experiences. My response and the outrage of it was due to the fact that I and many other nurses have first hand experience of abuse and assault by physicians which has been aided and abetted by hospitals and the powers that be. That caused me to uncritically rush to a judgement.
It is true that such behavior by physicians is less common and less tolerated now. I think that this is often more a reflection on the difficulty and expense of recruiting experienced nurses than anything else. A hospital I know of which was notorius for outrageous behavior by its surgeons recently required all their surgeons to take a class on anger management on pain of losing their block time in the OR. While this is encouraging, one must also recognize the enormous double standard: Nurses are fired on the spot for behaviors that are free of consequences for physicians. And Boards of Nursing can be used as weapons against nurses.
In the end, I feel that justice has been done in this case. While some of the Board's findings have a feel of "piling on", a year of probation is proportional to the actual offense, and the Board could have been much, much more punitive.
