03.09.2000

Board dismisses complaint in nursing whistleblower case
By Associated Press, 3/9/2000 00:16

BOSTON (AP)—A state nursing board has dismissed a complaint filed by a nurse who said he was fired for blowing the whistle on unsafe staffing levels. 

Barry Adams, 42, of Boston had filed a complaint alleging unprofessional and unethical conduct against two of his supervisors at the Youville Health Care Center in Cambridge. 

The complaint, filed with the state Board of Registration in Nursing in October 1996, claimed that Anne T. Poster and Sister Joan Coyne endangered patients because too few nurses were kept on staff. 

The complaint said unsafe staffing levels at the nursing home led to a patient's overdose death. 

Adams was fired a week after he filed the complaint. But the National Labor Relations Board in 1997 ordered him reinstated and awarded him back pay. 

Adams then resubmitted his complaint against the two supervisors, but the Board of Registration in Nursing on Wednesday dismissed it, citing a lack of evidence, Adams said. 

"In health care, nurses are where the rubber hits the pavement,'' Adams said. ''If you don't have nurses who can speak up freely, those patients are in danger.'' 

David Schildmeier, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said nurses who had gathered for the board's decision were outraged. 

''If you purposely and repeatedly give nurses more than they can handle, which happened at Youville, you're inviting a patient death,'' he said. 

The Youville Health Care Center has closed, and Adams, 42, has left nursing to study social policy at Brandeis University.