Sharp rebuked

A wrongful-termination suit that had been thrown out by a Superior Court judge was reinstated in August by the Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District.

Karen Nosal-Tabor, a registered nurse who formerly worked in the cardiology department at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, filed suit against Sharp for wrongful termination and retaliation.

Nosal-Tabor had complained many times to Sharp management that nurse-led cardiac stress-testing, in which a physician is not present, was essentially the practice of medicine and was illegal. Sharp argued that it had adopted legally sufficient standardized procedures that made the procedure satisfactory. After she complained numerous times, she was fired. She sued, lost at the trial level, and appealed.

The appellate court reversed the trial court's action, concluding that Sharp didn't show that Nosal-Taylor's objections to nurse-led stress tests were unreasonable. She was fired for making complaints, not for refusing to perform the tests, said the appellate court.