ED nurse started push for the first reporting law
ED nurse started push for the first reporting law
One ED nurse was prompted to action after seeing one tragedy too many, when two injured drunken drivers were released without being charged, just one weekend after a drunk driver killed two children of a family returning from vacation.
"A police officer came to the bedside of a highly intoxicated patient, issued a broken taillight citation and left," recalls Carol Bonnono, RN, CEN, an ED nurse at Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital in Portland. "I called the police officer back and told them the blood alcohol level was 0.299, and asked them to come back and reinvestigate the crash."
Hospital administrators warned Bonnono that her actions were against the law. "This had been going on for years, but there was nothing we could do because of patient confidentiality laws," she says. "I was treating the same people week after week for injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents they caused by driving while intoxicated, and I could do nothing but help stitch them up and send them back out on the road."
Bonnono decided to turn her frustration into action, by working with her county's DUI advisory board, local politicians, and community leaders to draft legislation. Five years later, the bill was passed into law, allowing ED personnel to notify police of blood alcohol levels which exceed the legal limit.
Largely as a result of Bonnono's efforts, Oregon became the fist state to allow reporting of blood alcohol levels of drivers treated in crashes. "Police officers and state troopers have told me that they'll be in an ED and a nurse will come up to them and say, 'Don't leave this ED until I get the results," she says.
A major goal is helping impaired drivers get into treatment. "Studies show that people ending up in these crashes have levels of blood alcohol levels averaging 0.220," Bonnono says. "We have this opportunity in the ED to make a difference, and get these people into mandatory treatment and off the road."
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