Robert C. Keeley practices medicine in Roanoke. In September 2005 while on call for his practice at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Keeley was in a car accident, subsequently charged and convicted of DUI. He also told the board that he provided medical directives to nurses on other occasions he drank alcohol and that he attended a substance abuse program in late 2005.
Keeley was REPRIMANDED by the board in April, almost two years later, and required to enter a program with the Health Practitioners’ Intervention Program (HPIP)
Keeley is not alone:
Maybe she was having a bad day? Maybe she was thirsty?
Either way, Trisha Howell, a nurse at Town and Country Assisted Living in Lebanon, VA, was found with a 40 ounce beer between her legs in a residents room. At the time, Howell was responsible for 18 residents, 15 of which were mental health residents. She was fired and charged with neglect.
Howell was also charged with, in separate incidents, driving while intoxicated and child endangerment in 2006, forgery (1991) and concealment (2000). It looks like the most recent offenses in 2006 led to a year of supervised probation.
Howell’s license was suspended in May by the Virginia Board of Nursing.
And last, but not least, Neva Tutwiler had her license suspended until the board meets again in September to discuss allegations of coming to work drunk in Winchester.
Let’s turn to a brief from the The Huffington Post last year that points to a study about this topic:
“Workplace alcohol use and impairment directly affects an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. workforce, or 19.2 million workers, according to a recent study conducted at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) and reported in the current issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
Information about workplace alcohol use and impairment during the previous 12 months was obtained by telephone interviews from 2,805 employed adults residing in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. The sample of participants was designed to reflect the demographic composition of the adult civilian U.S. workforce from ages 18-65.”
