Hospital Employee Assistance Program: Sexual Compulsion Should Have Been Reported
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
November 1998
Quick Summary: When an employee revealed his sexual compulsion to an EAP counselor, the counselor became concerned for the welfare of patients at the hospital, but did not tell anyone in hospital management.
Although the hospital’s employee assistance program (EAP) was designed to provide confidentiality, it was this hospital’s policy that an EAP counselor could reveal information gained from an employee in a counseling session, if someone was in danger.
The hospital is legally responsible for the counselor’s inaction which led to a patient being molested.
The respiratory therapist met a young boy while the boy was a patient, but did not molest him until a year later. It happened after the respiratory therapist had been terminated from the hospital for an unrelated incident.
The hospital may have been negligent for hiring the respiratory therapist in the first place without investigating why he was fired from a previous position in a hospital.
SUPREME COURT OF IDAHO, 1998.A male respiratory therapist struck up a friendship with a male child while caring for the child during the child’s six-week hospitalization. A year later the respiratory therapist, according to the court record, was fired for encouraging underage hospital employees to consume alcohol after being warned by the hospital not to do so. After his termination, he pursued a sexual relationship with the boy whom he had met and cared for one year earlier, and sexually molested the boy.
The boy’s parents filed suit against the respiratory therapist and the hospital using the pseudonym "John Doe" for the boy.
The respiratory therapist had been discharged from a previous hospital position for molesting a patient. When he applied for employment at the hospital where he met the boy he admitted he had been terminated, but he did not say why. The hospital verified only that he had worked at the other hospital and had been terminated. The hospital could have but did not request a copy of his personnel file which would have revealed why he was fired.
Two years before he met his victim the respiratory therapist spoke with an employee assistance counselor at the hospital where he later met the victim. He discussed being "preoccupied with sex" and stated that "any partner will do."
According to the Supreme Court of Idaho, the employee assistance counselor realized the man had a sexual compulsion which posed a danger to patients. The court said the counselor should have reported the situation to hospital management for further investigation.
The court did not say specifically what hospital management should have done, that is, whether the respiratory therapist should have been dismissed, or whether it would have been sufficient for the hospital merely to supervise more closely his interactions with vulnerable patients. "Doe" v. Garcia, 961 P. 2d 1181 (Idaho, 1998).