State board issues "correction action" on social worker Jean Kenney for her involvement in drug study in which a patient committed suicide

May 14, 2013

On November 8, 2012, the Minnesota Board of Social Work issued an Agreement for Correction Action on clinical social worker Jean M. Kenney. This is not a disciplinary action.

In June 2002, Kenney worked as a study coordinator/psychiatric social worker for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. Her duties included recruiting patients for comparative study of atypical antipsychotics which was funded by Astrazeneca, the maker of Seroquel, one of the drugs being studied. She provided social work services to a 27-year-old male who was enrolled in the study.

Kenney engaged in a range of tasks which were beyond the scope of practice of a clinical social workering, including obtaining the patient’s medical history; dispensing prescription drugs without authorization and in violation of the University’s policy; completed adverse event/medical diagnosis forms; initialed documents with the physician’s initials when the doctor neglected to do so and made numerous documentation errors in the performance of these tasks.

Kenney failed to address the patient’s family’s concerns in a timely manner. The patient ultimately committed suicide during drug study.

The Agreement requires Kenney to obtain 18 hours of continuing education on patient record documentation; scope of practice for social workers; ethical issues including timely communications in practice with respect to patients and their families and to obtain an practice consultant and engage in consultation about her practice for three hours, among other things.