Posted: March 2nd, 2022

Each student must post (1) substantial initial post with a minimum of 320 words.

The Chemically Impaired Co-worker
Discussion
Forum Instructions
Each student must post (1) substantial initial post with a minimum of 320 words. All
posts and replies must contain at least (2) professional references, one may be the
course textbook, properly cited in the current APA format. Late discussion posts are
not accepted in this course.
The student must also reply to at least (2) classmates using a minimum of 100 words
per reply (Dont work on the student replies yet unless I provide them and tell you
to do it). Begin by paraphrasing the student colleague’s work with a minimum of two
sentences. Then, add information, correct the information, or support the information
provided. Do not respond if two students already responded to a student. The 3rd
student will not count. In addition, non-informative messages posted in the discussion
forum will not be counted towards the required number of replies for that topic.
Discussion Topic: The Chemically Impaired Coworker
Karen is a skilled emergency department (ED) nurse in a hospital that treats many
trauma victims. In her personal life, she is struggling with issues of grief and loneliness
and feels like “work is therapy because I can forget for a while.” One day she
accidentally took home a discarded opiate. Feeling tired and unable to sleep, so she
self-administered the morphine “just this once” to provide relief and some much-needed
sleep. She tells herself she will not do it again. A week later, Karen purposely takes
home and self-inject another morphine. Within a short period of time, she is diverting on
a regular basis and realizes she will experience withdrawal unless she injects regularly.
Karen finds herself working extra shifts, volunteering to medicate co-worker’s patients
who need pain medications and isolating from other staff members in order to procure
and use the drugs. Fellow nurses in the ED recognize something is wrong, but knowing
how highly charged the department’s environment is, they assume it’s “just stress.”
Karen’s supervisor, Ann, notices changes in Karen’s demeanor and behavior and
decides to more closely monitor her practice. Ann also looks for medication irregularities
or discrepancies, record falsifications, and any patterns of complaints by patients. The
findings showed many narcotic discrepancies and patient pain complaints whenever
Karen worked as their nurse. Following the hospital procedure and investigating the
situation, Ann questions Karen about her performance and behavior.
After reading the scenario, take some time to reflect on delegation, then answer
substantively to the following questions.
1. Based on your knowledge of substance users, how would you
expect Karen to initially respond?
2. How do you believe Karen’s manager should respond to Karen’s
situation? Describe in detail.
3. Do you believe that Karen should be granted an option to return to
work in the future?
4. Does treatment end for Karen after successfully completes the
treatment program?

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