When a Co-Worker is Intoxicated is a post from: Everyday EMS Tips October 19-25 is Drug Free Work Week . Special resources are available and promoted this week to help businesses effectively address drug and alcohol problems in the workplace. Obviously every week should be drug free work week. Have you ever suspected that a co-worker is intoxicated? Has a co-worker boasted to you that they left the bar just a few hours before their shift started? The consequences of an intoxicated employee can be deadly to the person, your patients, and to you. This is what I have done when I suspect a co-worker is intoxicated or under the influence and we are not providing patient care. 1. Immediately contact my supervisor by phone or face-to-face report. Without delay since we might be paged to a call at any moment. 2. After contacting my supervisor for our unit to be out-of-service until I ask the supervisor for advice on what, if anything, I should say to my co-worker. 3. Fill out documentation provided by supervisor/HR department about the incident. Remember to document behaviors you observed and statements your co-worker made. Fortunately, I have not been in a situation where we were traveling to a call, caring for a patient, or transporting a patient with an intoxicated co-worker. Have you? I would like to think that would be a very rare situation that I will never encounter.

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