I get not going through a patient's belongings and the risk associated to confronting a patient with drugs or weapons, but this seems a bit much to not do anything if a patient is smoking crack or doing some other drug in their room at the hospital.
https://vancouversun.com/news/leaked...-from-patients
Quote:
Nurses in the Northern Health region have been told during the past year not to confiscate patients’ drugs or weapons, according to a leaked memo obtained by the B.C. United party.
The advice was in response to the province’s decriminalization experiment which has resulted in an increase in patients who possess or use drugs while in hospital, according to the memo.
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Quote:
While the Ministry of Health disputes that the memo amounts to an acceptance of illicit drug use in hospitals, the B.C. Nurses’ Union said the reality is that patients are using drugs in hospitals across the province, which is putting nurses at risk.
“This is becoming a widespread issue of significant magnitude,” Adriane Gear told Postmedia. Gear said she recently talked to a nurse who was exposed twice in a week to smoke from illicit drugs.
B.C. United health critic Shirley Bond grilled provincial NDP cabinet ministers over the memo during question period on Wednesday, saying it is evidence the government’s decriminalization policy has created a “free for all” in B.C. hospitals that is exposing health-care staff to illicit substances.
“There are reports of meth being smoked in a unit just hours after the birth of a newborn baby,” Bond said. “How many more nurses have to be put at risk and infants exposed to illicit hard drugs in our hospitals before the premier puts an end to this reckless decriminalization experiment?”
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