Jai - K & L Unit Nurse Manager

The thing about the Nurse Manager job is, you know everything that's happening on the unit. That's what the job really is, the Nurse Manager has to know everything that's happening on the unit. Everybody goes to the Nurse Manager with problems, complaints, requests, whatever. Staff and patients. She's the most important overseer. the one whose job corresponds most closely with that of plantation overseer.

K & L Unit has about 60 or 70 staff. Jai, the Nurse Manager, talks to all of them more than anyone else does. There are about 50 "patients" on K & L, who are the objects of all staff attention. If not for these 50 "patients" the 60 or 70 staff would not have jobs on this plantation. Most of the routine daily communication among the 60 or 70 K & L Unit staff is about one or another of the 50 "patients". In theory, the overseers watch the slaves very closely and know them very well.

Likewise, the "patients" know the staff really well. At least one witness in deposition stated that the patients really don't have anything else to do, it's their job to know everything they can know about the staff. It actually does become the job of patients for their own purposes, even though they are supposed to have a job called "recovery". The fact that a senior level staff actually said, under oath, that the real job of patients is learning everything they can about staff, is telling in a dark way. It reminds of me of the principle that the first and highest duty of any prisoner of war is to escape!

But I digress... I didn't actually think about that statement (that the real job of patients is to know everything about staff) until I started writing this article, which is supposed to be about Jai, the K & L Unit Nurse Manager....

Maybe I'm misinformed in some respect, but from what I have learned about how regular business on a clinical unit at EMHC is done, it's NOT possible that Jai didn't know about the obvious "boyfriend and girlfriend" relationship between Gabby Garcia and the "patient" Latwon, long before I actually saw it. Gabby and Latwon were sitting in the day room on K, holding hands and playing footsies, for godssakes! Gabby had been going in and out of Latwon's room (and I don't mean just standing at the door for a moment to deliver a message) for quite a while, and all the same telltale behavior had been known by people on L, when the two lovebirds had been over there before being transferred to K.

(The transfer of a patient from L to K Unit to cover up staff-patient romances has such a historical pedigree! But again, I digress... more on that another day.)

Who would be so gullible as to believe that not a single one of 60 or 70 K & L staff and 50 K & L "patients" ever made any comment, or winked in suspicion, to the one person whose job it is to know everything that's going on? 

I think Nurse Manager Jai knew about allegations (as carefully defined in the OIG Rule 50 educational materials), about Gabby and Latwon. I think she failed or neglected to report within four hours, as required. 

That's a violation of the law. And of course, it's something that the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation may choose to investigate. Jai is a licensed nurse. At least, for now she is.