The former director of nursing at Shady Side Academy, a private pre-K through grade 12 school in Fox Chapel and Pittsburgh, is suing after she said its administrators repeatedly directed her to disregard state regulations governing how medications are delivered in school and interfered with her ability to do her job.<\/p>\n
Diane Dean, 62, of Highland Park filed the complaint in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
It includes claims for wrongful discharge and seeks compensatory and punitive damages.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case is about one thing: a school that repeatedly chose tuition revenue and institutional optics over the safety of medically vulnerable children, and then fired the nurse who refused to go along with it,\u201d said Samuel J. Cordes, Dean\u2019s attorney. \u201cPennsylvania law does not give school administrators the authority to override a licensed nurse\u2019s clinical directives, and it does not permit employers to terminate nurses for insisting on compliance with the law that protects children.<\/p>\n
\u201cMs. Dean did exactly what the law required of her,\u201d Cordes said. \u201cShady Side Academy fired her for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement Thursday, Shady Side Academy said it \u201cdoes not comment on personnel matters or pending litigation. The Academy looks forward to our day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint said Dean was never warned or disciplined before being fired on Jan. 23 after raising a number of medical concerns to school administrators.<\/p>\n
Those included a number of alleged violations of state law such as: a failure to test employees for tuberculosis; allowing coaches to pass medication to athletes; allowing students to self-medicate on field trips; and withholding medication \u2014 like rescue inhalers \u2014 from students attending an after-school program.<\/p>\n
\u2018Compliance gaps\u2019<\/p>\n
According to the 21-page complaint, Dean was hired as director of nursing at the start of the 2025-26 school year.<\/p>\n
In that role, the lawsuit said, Dean was responsible for delivering health services across three campuses and four schools with about 1,300 students, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania\u2019s Standards of Nursing Conduct impose obligations on every registered nurse and prohibit them from knowingly allowing any other person to violate its regulations, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Failure to comply, the statute said, can result in license revocation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Pennsylvania Department of Health has explicitly confirmed that \u2018school administrators do not have the authority to delegate nursing functions,\u2019 \u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
Yet, it alleged, that\u2019s exactly what happened with Dean.<\/p>\n
She asserted that, upon starting the job, she immediately identified \u201cmultiple foundational safety and compliance gaps that had gone unaddressed for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the problems, the complaint said, was state-mandated emergency allergy and epinephrine training that had been required since 2020 had not been completed for the majority of faculty and staff, despite taking less than an hour.<\/p>\n
But the lead incident, the lawsuit said, stemmed from an 8-year-old student with Type I diabetes.<\/p>\n
Remote dosing<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, Dean discovered in early October that the student\u2019s grandmother had been remotely giving him insulin \u2014 which is administered through a pump implanted on the student and controlled by a smartphone \u2014 from her home while the student was at school.<\/p>\n
The practice, the lawsuit said, had been going on for at least a year.<\/p>\n
During the first five weeks of the school year, the complaint said, the student had been rendered unconscious at least twice from hypoglycemia, \u201crequiring aggressive physical intervention including sternal rubs to arouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUp to 10% of children and adolescents with Type I diabetes who die do so from severe hypoglycemia,\u201d the lawsuit said. \u201cRepeated hypoglycemic episodes also carry the risk of permanent memory and cognitive deficits.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Dean discovered what was happening, the complaint continued, she notified her supervisor and convened a meeting.<\/p>\n
At that meeting, the lawsuit said, all participants agreed that remote dosing was unlawful and unsafe.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the complaint alleged that Amy Szlachetka, the vice president of finance at Shady Side Academy, directed that action be delayed, conveying that \u201cshe was concerned with \u2018optics,\u2019 the risk of \u2018losing the family\u2019 and the potential for a \u2018discrimination suit.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
On Oct. 5, Dean filed a formal, written objection with Szlachetka directing the school nurse to provide only emergency care to the student while remote dosing continued.<\/p>\n
The situation resolved on Oct. 6, the lawsuit said, when the student\u2019s mother went to campus and transferred care to the school nurse.<\/p>\n
At a meeting in January, Szlachetka said, \u201c \u2018Do you know we almost lost that family?\u2019 \u2014 confirming the Academy\u2019s overriding concern throughout the crisis had been the preservation of a tuition-paying relationship, not the safety of a medically fragile child,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
The complaint asserts that the insulin dosing situation was not isolated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the sharpest expression of a pattern of administrative interference with plaintiff\u2019s clinical authority that had begun in the first weeks of her employment and that would intensify with each subsequent safety intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s not your area\u2019<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, Dean raised concerns about the after-school program \u2014 which served up to 150 students as young as 3 years old \u2014 for not having been evaluated to meet the standards for licensed child care facilities.<\/p>\n
Dean convened a meeting where it was confirmed that after-school staff had not undergone state-mandated tuberculosis testing and most lacked CPR or first-aid training.<\/p>\n
Further, the lawsuit said, some students at the program did not have access to rescue inhalers, which under state law can be administered only by a licensed professional or the student.<\/p>\n
When Dean sent a formal memo to Szlachetka on the issue, the complaint said, the administrator dismissed the concerns and \u201cdirected that medically vulnerable children be excluded from the program rather than ensure their lawful access to emergency medication.\u201d<\/p>\n
And when Dean raised the issue of implementing a TB testing program, the complaint said, Szlachetka dismissed it \u201cwith a wave of her hand, stating, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not your area.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
When Dean was fired, she was given one week to move out of the campus housing that was part of her employment contract.<\/p>\n
Dean earned a base annual salary of $95,000, plus benefits and housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former director of nursing at Shady Side Academy, a private pre-K through grade 12 school in Fox…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-592940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}