Positive Urine Cocaine Screen: Nurse's License Suspension Upheld By Court
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
December 1996
Quick Summary: A urine cocaine screen can be attacked as invalid if an irregularity can be shown in the chain of custody of the urine sample.
Taking certain medications can lead to false-positive urine cocaine screens. However, support for or rebuttal against the possibility of a false-positive requires expert testimony from a toxicologist.
SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS, WEST VIRGINIA, 1996.Because her initial R.N. license application listed a felony conviction for delivery of a controlled substance, a nurse’s license was approved by the state board only on a probationary basis, one of the conditions of probation being unannounced urine drug screens.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia upheld the suspension of the nurse’s probationary license for one positive drug screen, without further proof of actual drug use or on-the-job impairment of performance.
Although it did not prove to be a problem in this case, the court noted in passing that it is critically important to maintain documented proof of a direct and unbroken chain of custody of a urine drug sample, from the person being screened giving the sample, to the laboratory technician performing the test, without any opportunity for tampering or adulteration or the sample, and without any possibility for one person’s sample to be mislabeled as another’s, to avoid the results being invalidated after the fact by a court.
Stewart vs. West Virginia Board of Examiners for Registered Professional Nurses, 475 S.E. 2d 478 (W.Va., 1996).