Leaving your assignment as a nurse is a form of negligence of duty. A lot can badly happen to a patient if you will just leave your assignment without prior notice. It is a serious issue of negligence. You can have your license suspended or worse be revoked because of such inappropriate behavior. The Texas Board of Nursing will have you subject to disciplinary action or a lot worse than that. If this happens, an LVN should know how to defend herself/himself by means of having a nurse attorney around.
At the time of the initial incident, she was employed as an LVN at a hospital in Beaumont, Texas, and had been in that position for two (2) months.
On or about April 4, 2020, while employed as an LVN at a hospital in Beaumont, Texas, and assigned to a patient, who was a tracheostomy and ventilator dependent patient, LVN failed to ensure the caregiver was awake before she left her shift. LVN admitted she provided a written report and when she left her shift the patient was asleep. LVN’s conduct may have exposed the patient to a risk of harm in that leaving the nursing assignment could have resulted in the patient not getting the care needed.
In response, LVN states the incident was a misunderstanding in that she thought at least one of the parents was awake, if not both. She states she wrote out her report since the caregiver had not come out to receive it face-to face. LVN states she had not needed to call a supervisor for problems prior to this incident, so she did not know how to contact a supervisor during off hours since the phone number she was given was for an administrative staff member and not a nurse.
The above action constitutes grounds for disciplinary action in accordance with Section 301.452(b)(10)&(13), Texas Occupations Code, and is a violation of 22 TEX. ADMIN. CODE §217.11(1)(A),(1)(B)&(1)(I) and 22 TEX. ADMIN. CODE §217.12(1)(A), (1)(B),(4),(6)(C)&(12).
As a result, the Texas Board of Nursing decided to place her LVN license under disciplinary action. It’s too bad that she failed to hire a nurse attorney for assistance, knowing that she had every reason to defend herself in the first place. Her defense would have gotten better if she sought legal consultation from a Texas nurse attorney as well.
So, if you’re facing a complaint from the Board, it’s best to seek legal advice first. Texas Nurse Attorney Yong J. An is willing to assist every nurse in need of immediate help for nurse licensing cases. He is an experienced nurse attorney for various licensing cases for the past 16 years and represented over 300 nurses before the Texas BON. To contact him, please dial (832)-428-5679 for a confidential consultation or for more inquiries.