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January 11, 2021
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Iowa nurses have been sanctioned recently for being drunk at work, using cocaine, sleeping on the job and assaulting a patient.
One of the disciplinary cases that recently come before the Iowa Board of Nursing involves Lacey Friis, 39, of Sioux City, who has agreed to surrender her license to practice nursing. Board documents indicate Friis was working for an unspecified hospital from June 2015 until June 2022 when her employment was terminated.
According to the board, on June 7, 2022, Friis was seen using profanity and behaving unusually at work. She allegedly showed signs that she couldn’t focus and appeared to be falling asleep on the job.
Two weeks later, on the morning of June 23, Friis allegedly reported to work and behaved normally but according to the board, she had been seen purchasing and consuming alcohol at a nearby grocery store at midday, during her shift, before being sent home by management, and again after work.
The board charged Friis with excessive use of alcohol in a manner that might impair a nurse’s ability to practice the profession with reasonable skill and safety. Friis agreed to surrender her license.
Friis has worked at UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City since 2015. Board records indicate Friis has not previously been subject to any public discipline. However, court records indicate she was convicted of drunken driving in 2014, 2015 and 2016. In 2016, she was also arrested and charged with felony theft for allegedly stealing $240 from a taxi driver. She pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor theft.
Last month, Friis was charged with drunken driving after police alleged she was found in a Target store parking lot, slumped over in her car, which was running. That case is pending.
In 2018, Friis was the recipient of the Daisy Award for Extraordinary Nurses.
More nurse disciplinary cases
Other Iowa-licensed nurses whose licenses have been restricted recently include:
Danny Trent Mendez-Patterson, 42, who, under the name Danny Trent Nazareth-Patterson, was charged by the board with being convicted of an offense directly related to the duties and responsibilities of the profession. He recently agreed to surrender his license. Court records indicate that in December 2021, Mendez-Patterson was employed by the Parkridge Specialty Care nursing home in Pleasant Hill where he assaulted a resident of the facility.
Danny Mendez-Patterson (Photo courtesy of Polk County Jail)
After being charged with assault causing injury, Mendez-Patterson pleaded guilty to the offense. In March 2022, he was sentenced to one year of probation. According to police, witnesses alleged they saw Patterson push, slap and hit the 77-year-old woman, causing bruising around her right eye. The woman suffered an anxiety attack and was briefly hospitalized, according to court records.
Donna Kemker, a travel nurse from Georgia, who has agreed to relinquish her right to practice nursing in Iowa. The board alleged that while working as a travel nurse, Kemker was assigned to a hospital in May 2022 and she arrived for work showing signs of drowsiness, slurred speech and an unsteady gait.
She was evaluated in the hospital’s emergency department where, according to the board, tests showed she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.265 – more than three times the legal limit for driving. Kemker allegedly admitted she had consumed a large amount of alcohol before reporting for work and could feel its effect.
Valerie Barfield, 50, of Wellman, who has agreed to relinquish her right to practice in Iowa. The board alleged that in July 2022, Barfield was working at an unspecified care facility through an Iowa staffing agency. While on duty, Barfield repeatedly slept, and was seen by co-workers sitting in a recliner for extended periods.
Care-facility records indicated Barfield claimed to have administered multiple medications to residents throughout her shift, although video footage suggested the residents never received their medication. The video footage allegedly showed Barfield procuring multiple pills for residents without ever administering the drugs. According to the board, she later tested positive for cocaine.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.
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GOP's Hawley flattened in brutal profanity-laced column for berating St. Louis reporter
March 20, 2023
A “smug” Sen. Josh Hawley was captured in leaked footage berating a journalist for criticizing Elon Musk in social media posts, Riverfront Times reports.
The senior Republican senator from Missouri is heard in the approximately three-minute video questioning KSDK political editor Mark Maxwell over his criticisms of the Tesla and Twitter and CEO, questioning the journalist’s sobriety and making an apparent veiled threat to the journalist over future access to the lawmakers.
Maxwell initially went along with what the Riverfront Times described as an “inquisition,” telling Hawley he was expressing frustration with the "Why all the hate for people who like free speech on Twitter? What's going on with that?" Hawley asked Maxwell during a pre-interview.
The article ran under the headline: “Leaked Footage Captures Josh Hawley Acting Like a Smug (expletive).”
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"I mean, we give you a lot of access. I just want to make sure you're actually sober and taking this seriously, good Lord in heaven," Hawley tells Maxwell.
Hawley pointed to one Maxwell tweet criticizing Musk as “vitriolic.”
“Does anyone still think Elon buying this site and firing all the experts was a good idea?” Maxwell’s tweet said.
“It's been a while since I've seen any of his bootlickers brag on how efficient the site is now that Sir Galaxy Brain is in charge."
Maxwell said some of his harshest criticisms of Musk occurred at “a moment of frustration when the site went down.”
“Never mind that in this footage it's Hawley who looks like a stupid son of a b*tch, a pedantic school marm who lectures people and threatens their access while feigning concern about their Twitter manners,” Riverfront Times’ Sarah Fenske wrote.
“And never mind that someone in Hawley's team apparently prepped him by digging through his interlocutor's tweets (as if a senator and his staff shouldn't have better things to do!)”
Accordign to Fenske, the treatment of the journalist was payback for a KSDK article ridiculing Hawley’s claim that Silicon Valley Bank was rescued because it’s “too woke to fail,” which a Yale professor described as “irrelevant” and “delusional.”
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Justice Polston resigns from Florida Supreme Court; DeSantis will pick his replacement
March 20, 2023
Florida Supreme Court Justice Rick Polston announced his resignation on Monday in a brief letter, just four months after winning a merit-retention vote giving him another six-year term, allowing Gov. Ron DeSantis the chance to place another conservative justice on the state’s highest court.
“I am writing to resign from the Florida Supreme Court effective March 31, 2023. It has been my great honor to serve the people of Florida in the judiciary for over 22 years, the first eight as a judge of the First District Court of Appeal and then 14 years as a justice of the [Supreme] Court,” Polston wrote.
“I truly am grateful for the opportunity to work with such great jurists, lawyers, and all those involved in the judiciary,” he continued.
A Supreme Court spokesman said he had nothing to add beyond a short bio contained in a press release.
DeSantis marked the moment in a Twitter post.
“Thank you to Supreme Court Justice Ricky Polston for 15 years of service to Florida’s highest court. Justice Polston has been a remarkable Justice and was stalwart for the rule of law and the constitution of FL & the U.S. These are big shoes to fill!” it reads.
Polston, 67, was among five justices who went before the voters last year for a determination about whether they would remain on the court. Under Florida’s merit-retention system, commissions nominate potential justices to the governor, who makes the appointments, but justices periodically must stand in retention elections.
Since taking office in January 2019, DeSantis has placed six jurists on the Supreme Court, although two of them (Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck) soon were elevated to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. That leaves Carlos Muñiz, John Curiel, Jamie Grosshans, and Renatha Francis as DeSantis appointees. Justices Charles Canady and Jorge Labarga round out the seven-member court.
DeSantis has tended toward members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy when selecting judges, which has made for a staunchly right-leaning court all too willing to reverse important precedents.
In recommending against retention of justices including Polston last year, the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel complained: “Florida’s highest court has become breathtakingly activist, repealing precedents wholesale to make criminal laws harsher, the death penalty more likely and civil courts more hostile to people with damage claims against Big Tobacco and other corporate defendants.”
Former Gov. Charlie Crist placed Polston on the court in 2008 and he served in the rotating position of chief justice, top administrator for the entire judicial branch, from 2012 to 2014, according to court records. He served during the national foreclosure crisis, which prompted hundreds of thousands of court filings. Polston also oversaw the transition to mandatory electronic filing, a spokesman noted.
This change comes as the high court weighs whether to overturn a decades-old precedent holding that the Florida Constitution’s Privacy Clause covers the right to abortion. The case involves a challenge to the state’s 15-week abortion ban.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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