Do I have case? Please help me

[Mandam]

I live in Arizona. Hi I was hired on as a Behavioral Health Technician at our city's only detox. 2 nights before Christmas we were severely understaffed and I was left as the only tech on duty that night with the exception of a temp agency staff member who was not trained in anything other then taking blood pressures. My normal routine is assist patients, assess them for medication, vitals on all patients every 4 hours, bed checks every hour, provide food for patients, and unlock the bathrooms when needed. Operation Deep Freeze was in effect so we were very full.. Approximately 35-40 patients. We had a new staff member working as peer support and it was only his 2nd day. He was supposed to be shadowing someone that never showed up for his shift. Most staff were missing due to being off for Christmas. At around midnight the new peer support came to me and said that patient in bed 9 looked like "a zombie" that patient had been brought in from intake about 2 hours before shortly after my shift began and vitals weren't due for another hour so I hadn't had much interaction before this point. I walked past him after his arrival and noticed he appeared to be asleep and entered that in the hourly bed check. He was brought in to detox off of alcohol. I jumped up when the peer support mentioned his appearance to me and put gloves on and went to this members chair(detox uses recliners, called "beds") I shook his arm and called out his name and got no response. I immediately felt for a pulse and got nothing. I started a sternal rub and yelled his name louder and got no response. At which point I yelled to peer support to get a nurse now and I got the patients recliner back to prepare for CPR. The charge nurse came to assist immediately and at his direction we took turns administering CPR. 911 was called and unfortunately the man did not recover. He left our facility at 12:45 in the morning. Vitals were to be done at 1am but our facility was full of patients that just watched this traumatic event and they were pretty upset so I assisted the best I could to regain control of the floor. Vitals were done at 1 and again as scheduled at 5am. They took me longer being practically on my own. We had no supervision since the program super had called off and the program manager had resigned and her final day was 2 days later. We did call the program manager who did not come and help assist she just told us she would let leadership know what had happened and to get our documentation in nexgen(electronic health record) as soon and thorough as we possibly could. The hours following this patients death I was like chicken with her head cut off. I was trying to keep it all together all the while dealing with the traumatic experience in my own brain. I had asked for help from the only staff available and was turned down because they were also very busy being so short staffed. I ended up having to work a 16 hour shift as opposed to my normal 12 to make sure my documentation was complete.. That morning peer support confided in me that he didn't know anything about this field and he was supposed to be shadowing someone but no one showed up and he felt responsible for this death. I asked why he felt responsible and he shared with me that he noticed this patient had began turning turning "purple" with blue lips and sort of gasping for air an hour before he mentioned anything to me at all, he said he started to feel weird about what he saw and figured he better come tell me. I did include this in my documentation (incident report). A full week after Christmas, most staff was back from vacation and I get a call from the human resource supervisor telling me that I've been placed on paid administrative leave while they investigate this patient stuff from the beginning when talking to her I had said that I thought she would be very proud of her employees because I can sit here with good conscience and say the charge nurse in myself worked tirelessly an hour CPR efforts for this individual. That comment was greeted with a cold response and it dawned on me that my company was treating me like as if I had caused this or something I was told I was to speak to nobody that I work with other than the investigator or supervisors that I was not allowed near or on the property and the investigation went on for, just about two months., I was contacted by the lead investigator approximately 4 times throughout this 2 months. And told them the honest-to-god truth of what happened in what occurred that night and each time I got a call I could tell their demeanor towards me was getting colder and more distant and in the beginning they were trying to get me to say that the charge nurse didn't do something or basically put blame on him which I would not do because it's not true. Last Thursday I received a phone call at 9:30 at night and it was the lead investigator informing me that my company has decided they no longer are going to continue my employment I which point I got pretty upset I did record the entire phone call and when I mentioned that I was going to see an attorney her attitude did appear to change and she said she'd like to advocate for me to leadership and try and get my job back at which point now I wouldn't want to work for them again for how they treated me but I did ask what the official reason was for my discharge and they are stating that I am discharged for the timeliness of my bed checks in other words for the fact that the three bed checks in question which would have been the midnight the 1 a.m. and the 2 a.m. we're not entered in on time they were interred just not at the top of the hour which the midnight one I was right in the middle of CPR efforts on a dying patient so I questioned her and said you would rather me stop CPR efforts to enter in bed checks at exactly on the hour and she couldn't answer that for me. It has to be understood that this company makes its money by those bed checks. They bill for whatever chairs they fill. There wasn't concern over the services we provide those patients just that the billing be on time. I feel like I was wrongfully terminated so that they would not have to answer for putting someone as an experienced as the peer support was with me we were too overcrowded for one technician and I'm really upset do you feel I have a case? Just like every other person on Earth this job was all I basically had to live on and now I'm in like Dire Straits I didn't work there long enough because I was only hired in October to start claiming unemployment so I am just in a loose loose situation. Not to mention the hurt I am feeling for how awful they treated me after this event. I've been very depressed because I gave that patient every ounce of energy I had in me to try and save him and cried for days following and never once was I consoled or checked on or did anyone reach out to me. They have treated me so cold. Like I did something wrong.. It's not fair on any level. Any advice would be so appreciated.

 

[LdiJ]

That big block of text is very difficult to read. You might get better responses if you break it up into paragraphs and double space between the paragraphs.

 

[cbg]

Agreed. Not even going to try to read that.

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

I gave it a shot. She seems to be upset she got fired for a completely legal reason.

 

[Chyvan]

they no longer are going to continue my employment

File for unemployment. Your employer could have fired you even if none of this stuff had happened, and it had been a very uneventful night.

 

[commentator]

Having waded through that huge block of text and read it, I can say, "No, you do not have a case." Not for wrongful termination, anyway. Because you live in an at will state, and the employer could, very legally terminate you as they wish, at will for just about any reason except an EEOC related one. And that you do not appear to have here.

That said, it doesn't sound like a good place to work anyway. You need to find something else. No one should find themselves having to make that kind of choices, throw blame on someone at their request, and just because your employer has elected to terminate your employment, that does not mean you made the wrong choices. You are an army of one. Move on.

How an employer, any employer treats you is nowhere required to be fair or good and it should not blight your life, no matter what they did to you or how they treated you. They're in business only to make profits, and not to give you anything, including a living if they choose to do otherwise.

Move on. Get someone to talk to about how this has affected you if you need to in order to get yourself ready to take the next steps. Do not talk to your prospective employers about the past bad situation. When you are interviewing, stress the good things, don't mention the bad and negative things about this job (though it sounds like there were plenty, beginning with the profound understaffing.)

Regarding unemployment insurance, which would be your only recourse in this type of situation, I gather or rather I hope that you DID file a claim, and were told that you did not have monetary eligibility, (because you had only worked since October there, and had not worked anywhere else to have sufficient covered wages in the eighteen months to two years that came before this) correct? You did file a claim, and didn't just assume you wouldn't qualify, right? If you have worked anywhere else, and you have not yet filed a claim, do so quickly while you are looking for other jobs.

Move on.