Nursing News:
U.S. senators want federal nurse registry

by JOHN P. McALPIN
Hospitals would be required to report disciplinary action against nurses to a federal database and then check that registry before hiring health care workers under a bill detailed this past April. New Jersey¹s two U.S. senators said the nation needs tighter controls on problem nurses and pointed to the criminal case against one who said he killed as many as 40 patients during his career. Despite repeated firings, warnings and other actions, hospitals still hired Charles Cullen, who is now charged with murder and attempted murder.
³While Charles Cullen kept killing, our system, and hospitals are a part of it, kept hiring him,² U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine said at a Statehouse news conference. Cullen was charged in December with murder and attempted murder for allegedly giving overdoses of a heart medication to two patients in June at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville. One patient, the Rev. Florian J. Gall, 68, died from the overdose. A 40-year-old woman survived the overdose, but died from cancer several months later.
Last month, authorities charged Cullen in the 1998 death of a 78-year-old man killed by an overdose of heart medication at a hospital in Easton, Pa. After his arrest in December, Cullen told investigators that he killed as many as 40 patients using similar methods during a 16-year career at 10 medical facilities in the two states. Prosecutors are considering a possible plea bargain. During his career, Cullen was fired from six jobs and quit three. He also twice tried to commit suicide and was the subject of a criminal investigation.
But each time Cullen was dismissed or disciplined for infractions that included endangering a patient¹s health, his new employers were not told. ³It makes no sense to allow someone like this to go from job to job,² U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg said. The bill would require hospitals to report disciplinary actions and those records would be forwarded to state medical boards. States would also send word of firings, fines or other offenses related to medical care to the National Practitioner Databank, which collects such information about doctors.
Hospitals that don¹t forward information and those that fail to check the records before hiring a nurse would be fined $50,000. Hospitals are under no such mandate when it comes to doctors and the bill would not cover them. Hospital administrators back the plan. ³Nurses and other patient caregivers should be held to a higher standard,² said Dr. William Cors, chief medical officer at Somerset Medical Center. ³Our patients and their families deserve that trust and demand nothing less from us.² Nurses, hospitals and others who reported problems would be protected from lawsuits under the bill. Those that intentionally make false reports could be fined.
³Nurses welcome transparency,² said Ann Twomey, president of nurses¹ union, Health Professionals and Allied Employees. ³Truthfulness and truth in reporting has never been a problem.²
Copyright, The Associated Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission