Nurse Compensation Case Study

This is a Workers Compensation matter referred over by Patrick Quinn. Charlene works as a Nurse in the NICU in the ICU and has been employed by the Hospital for approximately 23 years. On November 19, 2015 beginning at about 11:30pm Charlene was working her regular shift when an outside contractor was changing ceiling tiles in the hallways just over her work area. These tiles had been randomly falling due to leaks in the pipes above the tiles. An outside contractor had placed blue dots on the tiles that were damaged. The problem had been reported to management some time ago and is documented on the W&I internal intranet “SharePoint” system. Anyway, on November 19 Charlene started to get a raspy throat and her nose was irritated. She continued to work. She notified the Assistant Nurse Manager Sue Petezle who talked to the contractor employees and told them to clean up the area. Keep in mind this is right in the NICU with the Hospital’s most fragile patients are located.

Charlene says a co-worker Tanya Gould filled out an incident report on the date of the incident because Tanya also had symptoms. Charlene’s first medical treatment was on December 1 with Dr. Ofstead who took her out of work for a “respiratory infection” which was the initial diagnosis. Charlene saw Dr. Ofstead a second time on December 7 when she was continued out of work due to her “asthma condition.” Charlene returned to work on December 14 but she was assigned to another area where they were also working on the ceiling tiles and after an hour and a half Charlene was unable to work. She filed an incident report herself. She notified the Nurse Manager Michelle Gagny that she unable to work due to difficulty breathing. On December 16 she saw Dr. Ofstead again who put her out of work through December 27 and referred her to a