The Times and ProPublica have found more than 115 recent cases involving registered nurses and an additional 27 cases among vocational nurses in which the state didn't seek to pull or restrict their licenses until they had racked up three or more convictions.
Many of the convictions involved off-the-job incidents, such as driving while intoxicated, stealing and taking drugs, or petty thefts. But the chaos and impairment often affected the nurses' ability to care for patients, sometimes in critical-care settings.
Escondido nurse Mary Eileen Cahill-Therrien was convicted three times in 2000 and 2001, of vandalism, driving under the influence and disturbing the peace. The registered nursing board failed to step in before she showed up for a home-care assignment at a patient's house seemingly drunk and refusing to wash her hands. According to a later ruling by an administrative law judge, she also left the patient's catheter in too long and had to be asked to leave.
Weeks later, Cahill-Therrien was fired from a different hospital job after she appeared to be drunk and refused to take a drug and alcohol screening test. Even after the board filed an accusation against her, she was able to get work at another hospital. She was fired after showing up drunk there too, the judge wrote. Her license was revoked in 2007.
Cahill-Therrien could not be reached for comment. Her former attorney declined to discuss her case, citing attorney-client confidentiality.
Linda Whitney, chief of legislation for the medical board, which oversees about 125,000 physicians, said her board plans to seek prints from up to 15,000 physicians licensed before 1968, who have never provided them. But, she said, her board has long used other methods to snag convictions among doctors.
"Could something slip through the cracks? Absolutely," she said. "There could be a doctor licensed in 1965 that could be convicted next week and we may never hear about it. . . .For consumer protection, which is our No. 1 mission, we don't want even one to slip through the cracks."
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charles.ornstein@ propublica.org
tracy.weber@propublica.org
Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber are senior reporters at ProPublica.
Times researcher Maloy Moore, ProPublica director of research Lisa Schwartz and Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica director of computer assisted reporting, contributed to this report.
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