A former nurse was sentenced in federal court in Boston for diverting liquid morphine intended for hospice patients at a Lowell nursing home. Michael Langlois, 50, of Dracut, was sentenced to 42 months in prison and three years of supervised release. In May 2019, Langlois pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with a consumer product and one count of acquiring a controlled substance by deception and subterfuge. On Nov. 16, 2016, Langlois, then a registered nurse, tampered with bottles of liquid morphine that doctors had prescribed for two elderly hospice patients under his care at a Lowell nursing home. In each instance, Langlois took the liquid morphine, a schedule II narcotic used to treat pain, for his own use and then replaced it with saline or Benadryl in an attempt to cover up his crime. As a result of his conduct, the patients in Langlois’s care received a less potent dose of the painkiller than they had been prescribed. On or about April 3, 2017, Mr. Langlois diverted for his own use liquid morphine from a bottle prescribed to an elderly hospice patient under his care at a Melrose nursing home. To conceal his wrongful conduct, Mr. Langlois falsely represented in the medical file of one of his patients, and in the nursing home’s Medication Administration Record, that the liquid morphine for that patient was pure, when that was not in fact the case.
