Background checks sought on students in health sciences

Monday, Oct. 17, 2005 | 6:59 a.m.

Several area hospitals and medical facilities are pressuring UNLV and Community College of Southern Nevada officials to perform background checks on health science students before those students can train in their facilities.

Criminal background checks are required by law for most licensed personnel, and several hospitals have internal policies that everyone, including volunteers and students, undergo the checks. But it has only been within the last year that hospitals have pushed to apply that same requirement to students, CCSN and UNLV officials said.

UNLV lawyer Richard Linstrom and CCSN lawyer Bart Patterson said wanting to insure the safety of patients is understandable, but the request has the schools in a legal bind because they have to accept and serve every student.

Patterson and Linstrom said that the colleges can't get into the business of investigating students. To do so would open up questions about privacy concerns as well as questions about how the colleges would judge who is acceptable to work in a hospital and who is not.

There's also the matter of who would pay for the background checks.

But health science students, including nurses, dental hygienists, physical therapists, radiologists and sonographers, need to be able to work in a clinical setting to finish their degree programs.

"We feel like we are kind of caught between a rock and hard place," Janice Glasper, director of CCSN's sonography program, said.

Glasper said she knows of no student who would have a problem clearing a background check, but she said she fears that sonography and other health sciences students will be pushed out of their clinical rotations soon if CCSN cannot resolve the issue.

Most of the hospitals have given UNLV and CCSN until January to try to figure out how to meet the requirement, college officials said.

"I think everyone wants to make sure that inappropriate people are not put in contact with patients, that we are providing quality health care and that we are giving students the best educational opportunities available," Linstrom said. "... I think it is just a matter of working it out so that all of these divergent objectives are met."

UNLV's School of Nursing and its School of Public Health are working together with the hospitals to allow students to pay for background checks at selected agencies and then have the university send out letters informing the hospitals that the students are clear or not clear, nursing dean Carolyn Yucha said. Linstrom said he would have to check the legality of that, but that it should be OK as long as UNLV isn't responsible for the investigations or the decisions.

Patterson said he is working with the different hospitals as their affiliation contracts come up for renewal to place the responsibility for the background checks fully on the hospital.

Jim Clark, vice president for human resources at Sunrise Hospital, said his company mandates background checks for everyone who works at the hospital and that Sunrise will take responsibility for that if the school cannot. The hospital has already made arrangements with CCSN to do that, Patterson said.

"We just want to be sure that the background check has been done on the student before they come into our facilities," Clark said.

UMC spokeswoman Cheryl Persinger said the hospital does not require background checks on students because students at UMC are so closely supervised by CCSN and UNLV faculty. Officials at other area hospitals said they require background checks on students but would not comment on how they are conducted.