Valley Hospital whistleblower files suit

Kim Smith

Wednesday, March 8, 2000 | 11:48 a.m.

A former Valley Hospital Medical Center nurse is suing the hospital claiming she was fired for reporting unsafe nursing practices and the falsification of records in the hospital's labor and delivery department.

According to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in District Court by Las Vegas attorney Douglas Cohen, Joanne Cooper received a number of awards while working at Valley Hospital in the mid-1990s and yet she was fired just before an inspection by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in March 1998.

According to its website, the commission is an independent not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits more than 19,500 health care organizations in the United States.

Hospital officials fired Cooper because they were afraid she would inform the commission about "the hospital's improper conduct," the lawsuit states.

Hospital officials were not available for comment on the suit.

The lawsuit states Cooper, once named nurse of the year, had reported to her unit manager the fact that she was asked to falsify records concerning narcotics, crash carts, anesthesia machines and blood sugar machines.

In addition, Cooper also reported to her superiors that the labor and delivery unit didn't have enough staff, the lawsuit states. While some nurses were working 16- to 24-hour shifts at the hospital to cover the shortage, others were coming to work at Valley after having worked an earlier 12-hour shift at other hospitals.

Cooper also complained that Valley hired under-qualified nurses to work in the labor and delivery department resulting in improper fetal monitoring, drugs being dispensed contrary to doctors' orders and improper blood transfusions, the lawsuit states.

Cooper saw nurses who were unable to intervene appropriately, nurses who didn't contact doctors when there was fetal distress and nurses who couldn't evaluate critically elevated blood pressures, according to the suit.

The hospital fired Cooper on the grounds of patient abandonment, but the Nevada Employment Security Division found that while Cooper left her station, she had contacted another nurse to take care of her patients.

The lawsuit quotes the state as saying, "The patients were being cared for by a nurse capable of accomplishing this task and (Cooper) had shown proper care in making sure that the patients were cared for."

In addition to suing on the grounds of retaliation, Cooper is also suing for discrimination.

According to the lawsuit, the hospital discriminated against her for "complaining about the disparate disciplinary treatment between the Filipino nurses and white nurses and for refusing to participate in pagan rituals at Valley Hospital that are not in accordance with the Jewish religion."