I don’t know about you, but if I’m paying the going rate of about $1,800.00 a month for a bed in a semi-private room at a professional care facility, the first thing out of my mouth is going to be, “Uh, hell no.”
Now, I fully realize shippers don’t care as much for their freight as someone would care for their aged grandmother, but the general principal remains. It is fundamentally against the law to practice any profession that requires a state-tested license without completing that license process, unless you are under direct supervision of a licensed professional of the same ilk, and even in that capacity, you can’t represent yourself as such until you fully earn your license to practice.
Say that three times fast.
Here’s an even worse case scenario – Student Nurse Parker is introduced as “Nurse Parker” and the family is unaware there’s an unlicensed “professional” in charge of the care of their grandmother. “Nurse Parker” has been to school, but didn’t do great in her nutritional studies or pharmacology program and fed grandma a big spinach salad while she was taking high levels of blood thinner for her blood clots. Grandma nicks her shin on the bedside and nearly bleeds out, because even though vitamin K was restricted, “Nurse Parker” didn’t remember spinach has high levels of vitamin K and should never be included in the diet of someone on blood thinners – something her State Board testing may or may not have caught, and should have rightfully been faulted to dietary, but the action is faulted to the nurse because she’s in charge of personal care. Regardless, the minute the family finds out an unlicensed nurse made a life threatening mistake with grandma’s care, the lawsuits are on like Donkey Kong. It won’t matter one bit how good “Nurse Parker” did in school, they’re going to dice her, possibly charge her criminally, fine the facility and award the family pain and suffering.
Can you imagine the litigious repercussions from the first accident of a truck driven by a student driver covered by the request granted by FMCSA recently to C.R. England, if that trainer isn’t present up front? I would speculate the very first lawsuit will pay out at quite a bit more than students’ bus tickets home will cost them for a year, and unfortunately, someone or something will have to be damaged before anyone pays attention.
I firmly believe if the FMCSA is going to stick with this ridiculous exemption, the states themselves should be able to have some say so about whether or not they will accept the responsibility of allowing student drivers to operate in full professional capacity without fully completing the license process.
I’m gonna climb down off my soapbox and wish I was in Tennessee at the Pride and Polish this weekend. We won’t make that one, but TD is going, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of pictures. We are attending the Top Gun Shoot Out in Rantoul, Ill. about-us.html the 24th-26th. It’s our first time there, Precious won’t compete, she’s going to have some stuff done with our buddies over at Lincoln Chrome and the next show we’ll put her in is GBATS in Joplin in September. Looking forward to it.
Have fun at the Tennessee show, and post lots of selfies with Todd to the FB page!
