CHICAGO, Illinois - September 21, 2009 - A head emergency room nurse at Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital has sued the city and a Chicago Police officer for handcuffing her and putting her in the back of a squad car during a dispute over drawing blood from a suspected drunken driver.

Lisa Hofstra said she was the “charge nurse” in the emergency room on August 1 when the officer approached her at about 4 a.m. The officer requested she perform a blood work-up on a DUI suspect, the lawsuit said.

Hofstra told the officer the suspect needed to be admitted to the hospital before she could draw the person’s blood. Hofstra said she told a police lieutenant that it was the hospital’s protocol to wait until a suspect was admitted, and the lieutenant agreed, she said.

The lieutenant left the emergency room.

Then Hofstra called her supervisors, but before they could respond, the officer put her in handcuffs in front of her co-workers and escorted her to a squad car, according to the lawsuit.

“I in no way intended to block this police officer’s ability to do his job,” she said in a news conference today. “He went about it in the wrong way. ... I would like him to be reprimanded.”