I found out today that I have been fired and am being reported to the state nursing board for dispensing medication to an employee. Is this dispensing? Can I lose my license or be reprimanded, etc? Thie is the situation: I came in to work to find that we were short staffed for the day shift. I had 3 CNAs on a long term care unit of 30 residents. One employee was a high school teenager who had become a CNA a month previously and had just completed orientation. The second employee came in extremely sick and needed to go home. The third employee was an insulin dependant diabetic who had worked the night shift and had been mandated to work another 5 hours. I called my supervisor who said she couldn't come in for about 2 hours or so because her son had had a pajama party and she had kids at her house. In actuality, she didn't come in until 4 hours after I had called her seeking help. She said I could not let the sick employee go home because of minimum state mandated staffing levels. After I called her, I found out that the diabetic employee didn't have any insulin with him and he said he'd "have to go without". He is a brittle diabetic with blood glucose levels often close to 500 despite taking his medication. I found his type of insulin in our emergency stock (which is the property of the facility until it is assigned to a patient) and gave him an unopened vial in order to prevent a serious health incident for him, which in turn would have jeopardized safe care for the residents. When the DON finally came in, I told her immediately that I had given it to him and she said I had dispensed medication without a license and could lose my nursing license. They are reporting me to the board of nursing. I certainly understand that I can not give a patient a medication without a physician's order, but the employee was not a patient and i simply gave him the bottle and did not administer it. What about the Good Samaritan Act? What if an employee was having an anphylactic reaction? Am I not supposed to give them Epi? Do I have to wait for a full out crisis or can I do what I can to prevent it? Opinions/info appreciated. Thank you