A nurse who is on the verge of being fired over her use of a medical marijuana card at a hospital has told CNN that she was forced to sign a contract because of a bureaucratic red tape that prevented her from working her full time job.
A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the median pay for a nurse was $45,000 in 2016.
But that was down significantly from a year earlier when nurses received a median pay of $65,000.
The BLS found that nurses with a degree earn more than those with a high school diploma.
In addition, nurses with bachelor’s degrees earn more money than those without a degree.
The median pay across all professions is now $55,000, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
“I’m not a medical doctor, but I am a nurse, so I’m supposed to work that job,” said Sarah Kost, a nursing associate at a nursing home in Philadelphia.
She is one of about 4,000 nursing assistants who are eligible for the state’s Medicaid program.
She says she was given an incentive to sign the contract after she signed a document saying she would work part-time and then she would be entitled to a pay raise if she continued working.
“The fact that I signed it and I signed that document was a mistake, so that’s why they were able to terminate me,” she said.
“They said if I continued working that I was terminated.
They were not able to work the full amount of hours I would have worked and I would be in a position where I would not be eligible for Medicaid.”
Kost has been a nurse for eight years, but says she felt like she was being treated like a “militant.”
She has not seen a single day off since she signed the contract, and she says she has never seen her boss, who she says is the same person who told her to sign.
Kost says she will never work as a nurse again because of the contract and the lack of work she can do.
“It is a job where you have to have a degree to do it, and I have that degree,” she told CNN.
“If I would just be able to have my license, I would do that job.”
It’s not just nurses who have been affected by the law, the BLS also found that doctors and other healthcare professionals are also being forced to pay for the medical marijuana cards they are supposed to have.
The BLS estimates that roughly 70 percent of all physicians working in the United States currently have a medical card.
Doctors who are not licensed can still be charged for marijuana prescriptions.
In 2016, the DEA estimated that some 2.4 million prescriptions were dispensed to non-medical marijuana users.
But the number of patients prescribed medical marijuana has decreased since the law took effect.
In a letter sent to the Department of Labor on Friday, the agency said that some states are exempt from the medical cannabis requirement because they do not have a large enough number of physicians who are licensed.
“This could result in the imposition of a substantial and burdensome administrative burden for non-physicians working in these states who are trying to fulfill their primary duties,” the BLL wrote.
“Physicians are expected to comply with their patient’s medical condition, even if it is contrary to the medical advice of their physicians, even though they may not have the training or experience to do so,” the letter said.
The DEA is urging the federal government to reclassify the medical pot cards as Schedule 1 drugs, which is the highest classification, so they can be dispensed without any restrictions and require no paperwork.
“We are urging the Department to immediately reconsider this classification,” the agency wrote in the letter.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has also said that the federal law is causing problems for doctors.
The DEA estimates that the medical cards that are being issued to doctors in some states have been confiscated by law enforcement, meaning they are not getting the prescriptions they need.
The agency has also warned that many of the states that have approved medical marijuana use will likely be exempt from having to follow the law.
The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that 2.6 million prescriptions for medical marijuana were disponed in 2016, a decrease from a high of 4.4 percent in 2015.
The bureau is also warning that many states that are exempt will not have enough licensed physicians to adequately meet the demand for marijuana.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a nonpartisan agency, estimates that about half of all U. S. states have a physician shortage.
A shortage of doctors could lead to an increase in the number who are using marijuana for medicinal purposes.