Understaffing: Fired Nurse Not Protected As A Whistleblower.

Understaffing: Fired Nurse Not Protected As A Whistleblower.

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

December 2016

Federal regulations require a hospital to have adequate numbers of licensed registered nurses to provide patient care as needed. The nurse had only her own non-expert opinion as to what the Federal regulations actually meant for the unit where she had worked. SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF WEST VIRGINIA November 17, 2016

After a long history of problems with insufficient and after-the-fact charting, which did not resolve with performance-improvement plans, a registered nurse was terminated from her position on the hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit.

The nurse sued claiming she was a whistleblower who had legal protection from employer reprisals because she had complained about understaffing and other matters the nurse considered patient-care deficiencies at the hospital. A jury awarded the nurse a million-dollar verdict, which the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia threw out.

The nurse could not prove her case that her unit was understaffed. Federal regulations require adequate nurse staffing but say so only in very general terms. The nurse was in no position to interpret exactly what the regulations meant for her unit. Nor do Federal regulations say anything about clerical support staffing. The nurse was also unable to point out a recognized standard that a defibrillator only on a unit adjoining the psych unit was not sufficient or that patients are required to wear non-skid as opposed to ordinary socks. Thomas v. Nutter, __ S.E.2d __, 2016 WL 6833116 (W. Va., November 17, 2016).