Hospice Fights Pediatric Nurse Whistleblower

I’m not quite sure what I think of this report of a pediatric hospice nurse accused of (and denying) overprescribing Nembutal for dying children, especially seeing that she was the whistleblower who noticed adult doses of the drug being prescribed for her young patients. It does, however, highlight the fine line between making someone comfortable while dying and actually killing them.

Fired pediatric hospice nurse fights to clear her name

. . . For 20 years, she was one of a handful of pediatric hospice nurses in the country -- caregivers who can withstand the torment of watching young lives fade. She was the only such nurse in Montgomery County. On call virtually every day, she slept with the phone beside her bed. Once, when her own daughter was sick, she hired a home health aide so she could care for someone else's sick child. "I didn't feel like a great mother, but I felt what I was doing was so important," Lark, now 52, said wistfully. "It was a calling."

On April 14, 2007, Lark was abruptly fired from Montgomery Hospice in Rockville. In a termination memo, her supervisors accused her, in essence, of being a bad nurse. Her skills were "frequently outside the acceptable and safe standards of nursing practice." She was asked for her keys and badge. Her computer was taken, and 14 minutes later, Lark was standing in the parking lot, staring with an uncomprehending gaze. more