Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012 | 9:25 p.m.
Beyond the Sun
A nurses’ union sued Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas on Tuesday after the hospital refused to rehire a nurse who had been investigated in the death of an infant there.
A lawsuit filed in federal court in Las Vegas said Sunrise should have rehired Jessica Rice with back pay as it was ordered to in December by Paul Staudohar, an arbitrator with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
Sunrise Hospital has not yet responded to the lawsuit or explained why it didn’t rehire Rice as ordered to do so by the arbitrator.
Tuesday’s lawsuit was filed by the Service Employees International Union Local 1107. It said the hospital’s announcement on Jan. 13 that it would refuse to comply with the arbitration decision violates its collective bargaining agreement with the union.
Staudohar’s ruling spelled out this sequence of events:
Rice, a critical care registered nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, was a “good and competent employee” with a six-year record of receiving “effective” performance ratings.
During her shift on May 23, 2010, she noticed that an umbilical arterial catheter inserted into a baby had broken.
She completed an incident report and spoke with her unit manager and charge nurse. The hospital notified Las Vegas police.
Rice worked the following night, but was then taken off the work schedule with pay pending resolution of the incident.
Another nurse, Sharon Ochoa-Reyes, was also taken off the schedule “regarding possible culpability in the incident.”
Police notified the hospital that Rice was a “person of interest” and interviewed her several times, but she was never arrested or charged.
In June 2010, the Nevada State Board of Nursing suspended her nursing license pending review of the matter.
Rice was fired in July 2010 “for failing to maintain an active Nevada RN license.”
A union steward at that time had argued Rice’s license was only temporarily suspended by the state board, not expired, and asked that the hospital place her on unpaid suspension pending resolution of her licensure issue.
Her license was restored by the state Board of Nursing in October 2010 when the board found no wrongdoing on her part.
On the day Rice’s license was reactivated by the Nursing Board, the union steward asked that the hospital rehire her, but it refused even though there were several openings in her field.
The arbitrator, in looking at other disciplinary cases at the hospital, found Rice was subjected to “disparate treatment” and that the hospital “did not have just cause to discharge” her.
The nursing license of Ochoa-Reyes, in the meantime, has been similarly reinstated.
While the death of an infant at the hospital linked to a broken catheter has been called a homicide, the nurses have said they suspect the catheters were faulty and insist they were wrongly linked to the problems.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy