A nurse says she was newly hired at the Morgan County Jail but lost the job a few days after speaking critically last month about how the Alabama Board of Nursing handles substance abuse among the profession.
“I feel like this was retaliation from the board of nursing,” Tyanna Arroyo, a licensed practical nurse with nearly 20 years of experience, told ADN recently.
Honor Ingels, a spokesman for the board, said it wasn’t aware that Arroyo had lost her job until contacted by Alabama Daily News recently. The board would not retaliate against Arroyo, he said.
“We have no motive to do that,” he said. “… That would be so far out of the lane of the way we operate. It’s just not possible.”
Arroyo said she was offered the job in mid-September. On Sept. 26, Arroyo spoke in front of the Joint Sunset Committee, detailing her negative experience with the board’s requirements for substance abuse treatment and testing that which she and others called expensive and overly burdensome. Alabama Daily News wrote about the meeting. Less than a week later and a few days before her start date, Arroyo said she was told she no longer had the job.
Arroyo’s nursing license has been on a probationary status since August 2023 due to a misdemeanor assault charge and drunken driving offenses, according to consent orders that are public record.
Having her license on probation doesn’t prevent her from working as a nurse, but it does come with stipulations. She needs to work with another nurse at all times, isn’t supposed to consume alcohol and has to submit to alcohol screenings, at her own expense. Arroyo was not in the board’s Voluntary Disciplinary Alternative Program available to nurses, but under the consent orders has similar requirements.
Arroyo noted that she’s never been disciplined for anything related to her patient care or nursing skills and she says the profession is her calling. She also says she feels like she and others are being forced out of it by the board at a time when there’s a nursing shortage.
Arroyo said she was upfront with those doing the hiring at the Morgan County Jail and provided the necessary paperwork. She said she’s worked third shift for years, and that was the plan at the jail when she was hired. Later, she said, she was told she couldn’t work there because there wouldn’t be another nurse on duty. She offered to work days and was told no.
In response to questions, a spokesperson for Morgan County said the jail and county do not hire jail medical staff. A third-party vendor, Quality Correctional Health Care, does. Calls and an email sent to the company were not returned.
Ingels, the board spokesman, said contact between the board and Arroyo’s employer for her discipline records was initiated by the employer.
“In response to the employer’s request, ABN staff provided public documents related to Ms. Arroyo’s case,” Ingels said. “Neither the board nor any member of the staff of the board initiated contact with the employer or intervened in any employment decision.”
Arroyo said she’s filed for unemployment and is considering her next steps.
“I’m going to continue to pray, I’m not going to give up,” she said.
One state lawmaker recently said there may need to be more state oversight or standards for professional licensure boards’ substance recovery programs for licensees. At the Legislative Contract Review Committee meeting last week, Speaker Pro Tem Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, commented on a one-year, $60,000 contract from the Occupational Therapy Board for services for impaired practitioners. Pringle also sits on the Legislative Sunset Committee that authorizes the state’s occupation licensing boards and was at the meeting Arroyo spoke at recently.
Pringle told ADN every profession is different and a one-size-fits-all program won’t work, “but we ought to look into it and see what’s working and what’s not.”
“Some licensure boards sub it out to their associations, some licensure boards (contract) with professionals, some boards almost make criminals out of their people and some of them might be more soft on their members than they should,” Pringle said.
“… I think it’s something that needs to be looked at.”
Update: This story was updated to clarify that Arroyo did not participate in the nursing board’s Voluntary Disciplinary Alternative Program.