A pharmacy technician is suing her employer for traumatizing her during a recent training session
Recently reported on FindLaw, a New Jersey pharmacy technician claims she was traumatized from a mock hold up arranged by her employer. The gunman told the technician that he had taken another employee hostage and demanded the pain narcotic OxyContin. Later she found out that the hold up was fake and the employer arranged it for a training exercise.
The technician claims that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder arising from this training exercise. The technician’s claim rests on the fact that she was not notified in advance of the training drill.
Employers need to be cognizant of how these training exercises will affect their employees and try and prevent any undue stress or hardship. There is a balance between realism and effectiveness that must be calculated for any training exercises. In this case the effectiveness of the training seems to have been significantly overshadowed by the trauma caused by its realism.