Nurses

Nancy L. Beecham, left, and Dian Harrison, right, both members of the California Board of Registered Nursing, listen to Ruth Ann Terry, the panel’s executive officer, during a board meeting in Los Angeles.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Board of Registered Nursing members Susanne Phillips, Elizabeth O. Dietz, Nancy L. Beecham and Janice Glaab, from left, attend a board meeting in San Diego in April 2009.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Germaine Velasquez swears in before petitioning for reinstatement at a Board of Registered Nursing meeting in Los Angeles. Beside her is her father, Matthew, who speaks to her character.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Ruth Ann Terry has been at the helm of the Board of Registered Nursing for nearly 16 years. She acknowledged that the pace of the disciplinary process has “always been unacceptable” and said the system was being streamlined. But she blamed other parts of the state bureaucracy for delays.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Bakersfield College nursing students Shelley Simpson and Sarah Peters-Findley, from left, at a nursing board meeting in Bakersfield in September 2008. Nursing students regularly attend such meetings and listen to nurses petitioning to get their licenses back so they can see how nurses can jeopardize their careers through their misconduct.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Defense counsel Jennifer Lane Sturges, right, reviews documents on the sixth day of a disciplinary hearing for Wilma Walker, a former nurse at Martin Luther King Jr./ Drew Medical Center, before Administrative Law Judge H. Stuart Waxman.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Wilma Walker, right, a former nurse at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, testifies at her disciplinary hearing before Administrative Law Judge H. Stuart Waxman. Deputy Atty. Gen. Linda Su questions Walker.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Judy Robins holds a portrait of her sister Dorothy “Jeanie” Rising. Home healthcare nurse Carolyn Claeys was found passed out, high on drugs, in Rising’s Santa Cruz apartment the day after Rising died of cancer in July 2006. Claeys had been put on nursing board probation a year earlier. But less than four months into the probation, she was convicted of a DUI. Four months after that, she was fired from a nursing home for stealing drugs. She tested positive for drugs three times between November 2005 and March 2006 and missed 12 required drug tests. Any of these violations would have been grounds for the board to revoke her probation. But the board took no action — at least none that could be found in public records. Five months after Rising’s death, the board filed a petition to revoke Claeys’ probation. She didn’t contest the charges, and her license was later revoked.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Plastic surgeon Iraj Zandi says staffers at a Fremont, Calif., surgery center found that nurse Jennifer Bales had removed the painkiller Demerol from vials and replaced it with saline. Any nurse would know the consequences for a patient: pain during surgery and possibly serious infection from unsterile saline, the surgeon said. Zandi alerted police and reported Bales to California’s Board of Registered Nursing. In December 2006, Bales was found guilty of embezzlement for stealing drugs and hypodermic needles. But it would be another year before the nursing board filed an accusation. She failed to respond and her license was revoked in 2008.  (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)