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Hospital Says Nurse Was Stealing Pain Killers

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Nov 8, 2008 6:56 pm US/Mountain

Hospital Says Nurse Was Stealing Pain Killers

Reporting
Mike Hooker
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) ― There's an investigation into what happened during surgeries at a Boulder County hospital. Surgery patients apparently received saline solution instead of a strong pain killer.

An investigation by the hospital shows it happened because a nurse was stealing the pain medication. The hospital says the patients are fine and they immediately passed the case onto Boulder police.

Police say the male nurse is from Lafayette, he's in his late 20's and had only been working at the hospital since June.

"One of our anesthesiologists became suspicious because he was using fentanyl and it wasn't working on his patients," Rich Sheehan with Boulder Community Hospital said.

Sheehan says it turns out a nurse had drained and refilled bottles of the potent pain killer that's one of several pain drugs used in surgeries.

"Our anesthesiologists tell me that patients would not have been affected by this in terms of actually feeling any pain.

The hospital fired the nurse and now police are investigating.

"The allegation that was made to us is essentially a felony theft, which is that he stole 45 to 50 vials of fentanyl, apparently drew the fentanyl out of these vials and allegedly replaced it with a saline solution of some kind," said Sarah Huntley, Boulder Police Spokesperson.

Huntley says police haven't yet filed charges against the nurse, but felony theft may just be the beginning.

"If we can determine for example that the saline solution was given to patients and harmed them in any way," Huntley said. "If we can determine the vials were in fact tampered with, there are some federal statutes that could apply to that."

The hospital sent letters to 320 patients who had surgery during a three-week period in September and October. About 200 of those may have been directly affected.

"It didn't put them at risk in terms of feeling pain during their surgeries, but there's a bond of trust that people have with their doctors, with their hospital and that was definitely violated, and that's what really bothers us," Sheehan said.

Sheehan says the hospital is taking steps to keep this sort of drug theft from happening again.

"What we've done is we've upgraded our drug control system. Now it will proactively tell us if there is any sort of drug use that is out of the norm," Sheehan said.

Boulder police say their investigation continues and they expect to make a decision about filing charges against the nurse by sometime late next week.

Police say they haven't yet determined why the nurse was stealing the fentanyl. He could have been using it himself, or possibly selling it.

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