Outrage: A Nurse’s Good Deed Goes Bad

It was far past quitting time when nurse Joyce Diasparra, 56, left work one evening in late October. She hadn’t driven far when she noticed one of her patients from the Erie County Home in Alden, N.Y., wandering on the side of the road in the dark.

Even though she was off duty, Diasparra’s nursing instincts kicked in. She worried about the patient’s safety and knew that she needed to get him back to the facility. Diasparra didn’t have a cellphone to call for help. She also knew that this particular patient had shown potentially dangerous tendencies in the past and worried about approaching him on her own. Diasparra did the most responsible thing she could think of—she turned her car around, raced back to the health care facility and got the security guard. Together they found the patient and brought him back safely.

Everything appeared to turn out fine. But that is not how Diasparra’s supervisor saw things. Diasparra was written up and suspended for one day without pay, the only blemish on her 15-year record at the Erie County Home.

“The director of nursing told me that I should have stopped my car and walked him back or flagged down another motorist. I flat-out told her that was stupid,” Diasparra says. “I knew he was dangerous. I felt like this was the safest thing to do.”

Diasparra had planned to keep her job as head nurse of a 50-patient unit at the facility until she retired at age 65. But she found it too hard to accept the way the facility had handled the situation. “I felt like I can’t trust these people,” she says. “This was just it.” She took early retirement and found a new job.

Representatives of the home had no comment.

Michelle Diament, who frequently writes for the AARP Bulletin’s In the News section, lives in Memphis, Tenn.