Los Angeles County health officials are scrutinizing the CPR training of dozens of nurses at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center amid allegations that a nurse manager was selling or, in at least one case, giving away the required certification, officials said Thursday.
Virginia A. Williams, a 23-year King/Drew veteran, was escorted off the hospital grounds Wednesday after health officials conducted a sting. Williams, who estimates that she has provided cardiopulmonary-resuscitation training to half of King/Drew's staff, has been put on unpaid administrative leave while the inquiry continues, officials said. She has denied the allegations.
"The thing I worry most about is who would buy such a credential," said Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, county health director. "The question is not only her ethics in selling a credential, it would be anyone's ethics in buying such a credential."
Garthwaite said his department has no idea how many King/Drew doctors and nurses might have acquired the certifications improperly. Following up on a tip about Williams' alleged illicit sales, auditors so far have identified 37 cases in which she signed nurses' CPR cards. It is unknown whether those cards were obtained legitimately, but all of the nurses involved will be retested, he said.
The inquiry could expand significantly. A preliminary review found hundreds of instances in which a card was issued but no instructor's signature could be found, county officials said. And they said officials have not yet begun reviewing the files of doctors and other hospital staff certified in CPR.
Garthwaite said that the county auditors received the tip about the nurse manager in mid-August but that it took a while to set up the undercover operation. In an interview, he conceded that officials may have waited too long.
He refused to confirm the identity of the nurse manager, but two other sources familiar with the investigation confirmed that it was Williams.
Garthwaite said the nurse manager's alleged activities were a disheartening indication that the ethical problems that have dogged the 33-year-old hospital remain stubbornly entrenched. King/Drew, south of Watts, serves a largely impoverished minority community.
Several cases have surfaced in the last two years in which King/Drew nurses are alleged to have falsified documents or medical records, but this is the first indication of a potentially broader scheme among staffers to skirt critical life-saving requirements.
