I want to preface this by saying that I love Langdon. But as someone who works in healthcare as a nurse, I completely get where Robby is coming from on a technical level.
I keep seeing people dogpiling Robby for telling Langdon, “I don’t want you working in my ER,” but The Pitt is actually pretty medically accurate, including a lot of the stuff that you don’t see that’s happening in the background.
From a hospital standpoint, Langdon is a liability- not just because he’s a former drug addict, but because everything he does from now on is going to be scrutinized with extreme prejudice. Every narc he pulls, every waste he documents, every order he writes is going to be looked at sideways. If a patient says, “I never got my pain meds,” guess whose name is getting flagged first even if he did everything right? Langdon’s.
That means extra work for Robby as the one running the department. He’s going to have to triple check Langdon’s orders, triple check any narcotic discrepancies, and open an incident/investigation every time something even looks off. That’s chart reviews, Pyxis logs, witness statements, pharmacy calls, manager emails, the whole nine yards, over and over again.
Realistically, Langdon probably wouldn’t even be allowed to access the Pyxis anymore, which means someone else has to pull his meds, co-sign his wastes, and basically babysit his access. That slows everyone down, keeps patients from getting their meds in a timely manner, and drags other staff into the liability with him whether they like it or not.
On top of that, pharmacy audits are going to increase, “random” drug tests are going to ramp up, and the state/board/DEA are going to have their eyes on that unit. One bad outcome or one missing vial doesn’t just fall on Langdon, it lands on Robby, the ER, and the entire hospital. People can and do lose their licenses, their jobs, and their reputations over this kind of thing.
And that’s before you even get into optics: if a patient or family finds out their doctor has a history of diverting drugs, they’re not going to calmly say “oh, good for his recovery.” They’re going to complain, demand another doctor, maybe call risk management or an attorney. Administration hates that kind of attention, and it puts a target on Robby for “allowing” it in his department at the Attending.
So yeah, it sucks to hear, and it’s painful because we like Langdon and want him to do well. But from a clinical, legal, and leadership standpoint, Robby’s reaction is unfortunately very realistic. It’s not about hating Langdon or not believing in recovery; it’s that the ER is already a high risk environment, and adding known extra risk on top of that affects way more than just one person.
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