"Failing to report my medication to potential employer and almost costing me a job"

I am writing to you in regards to my recent pre-employment drug screening experience, prior to the commencement of my contract. What was thought to be a straight forward process, in my opinion turned out to be nothing short of a disgrace.

Upon arriving for my drug screen, I was asked to fill out a form, requesting I declare any prescription medication I was currently on. After declaring the applicable medication and progressing with my sample, the nurse present and I both signed the required documentation and had my sample sent off.

With my sample now submitted and declaration of my prescription made, I believe this should’ve been a straight forward process. Wrong. I received a phone call the following day from my agency, informing me that my screen had returned an imbalanced result. I was left dumbfounded as to what this could possibly be, that was causing the positive result, given I had declared the one and only thing I had been consuming? This was extremely alarming, given I was meant to start work the following Monday and it was mandatory to have a “clear” sample provided – prior to starting my engagement.

It was now Monday and the only message I was hearing back from PathWest & my potential employer, was that my results showed a positive reading and I could not start work due to this. After not hearing back on any progress for a couple of days, I took matters into my own hands and contacted my potential employer – myself. The only information they had was that my results were showing higher amounts of “something” and this was causing my screening to read “positive” and preventing me to start work. I was still left scratching my head here and going a little insane in the process. I had declared my medication, never taken an illegal substance in my life and about to potentially lose a job opportunity?

As a long shot, my instincts for some reason said to ask my potential employer, if they had been informed on my prescription. They said, there was nothing noted at our end about any prescription medication. This was extremely alarming. I dug a bit deeper into this and it turned out that your staff had failed to pass on any information about my declared medication, nor take this in to account when passing on my results to my potential employer.

After finally getting to the bottom of this, and PathWest finally acknowledging that this was declared – I progressed to provide my potential employer with a copy of my prescription and start work two days later. Due to a failure of information provided at PathWest’s end, I not only missed out on 4 days work, but almost lost a job in the process. All parties involved at my end were no doubt left questioning what type of drug influenced character they were employing and if it wasn’t for my instincts kicking in, I would’ve missed out on my job due to this costly oversight. This was extremely humiliating.

In the interim, PathWest have failed to contact me to discuss / apologise for this, nor has any compensation been discussed.