HOUSTON – A traveling nurse who resides in Los Angeles has pursued legal action against HCA Health Services of Texas, Inc. and Pasadena Bayshore Hospital, Inc., claiming the entities tortuously interfered with her existing contract with her placement agency.
In a lawsuit filed Nov. 1 in the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas, Ganesa Rosales asserts that the defendants fired her in retaliation for reporting violations of the Texas Administrative Code and Standards of Nursing Practice at Bayshore Hospital in Pasadena.
Rosales became a traveling nurse after she and her physician husband moved to Southern California last June. American Mobile Network signed her to a 13-week contract and deployed her to the geriatric psych unit at Bayshore in August.
A month later, AMN notified the plaintiff that her contract was extended to which she accepted.
Per recent court documents, Rosales worked with two patients who were supposedly fall risks. Though she informed the respondents that said patients required one-on-one care, they state, no immediate action was taken.
One of the patients, an elderly woman suffering from dementia and a heart condition, experienced a fall resulting in a head injury, the original petition says.
Rosales adds that she noticed staff members in her unit ignoring an 85-year-old cancer patient “crying out for help from her room.”
“When it was clear her supervisors were not going to dress the substandard care and ongoing nursing code violations, the plaintiff stayed late after a shift to speak with the head nursing coordinator in his office,” the suit says.
“The plaintiff explained all of her concerns about what she had witnessed, as well as the numerous violations of nursing code and standards of practice. The nursing coordinator thanked her for her report but did not discuss taking any corrective action.”
The plaintiff reportedly filed “no less than” ten reports of violations of law to her supervisors, including one in-person report to the head nursing coordinator.
Rosales further shows that the defendants called her as she traveled to L.A. last month to tell her she needed to undergo a drug test upon her return to work, alleging the causes for the test were dubious. She took the test, but was suspended pending the results, the complaint says.
According to the suit, Rosales tested negative, but the defendants terminated her. AMN, which is not a party in the case, removed her from its roster and voided her contract.
The complainant believes her firing had to do with her efforts to address workplace violations.
She consequently seeks unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.
Attorney Jarrett L. Ellzey of the law firm Hughes Ellzey, LLP in Houston is representing Rosales.
Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas Case No. 4:16-CV-3208