Alison Renee Marshall, 45, of Sturgis, Michigan, pled guilty to a charge of tampering with a consumer product, specifically vials of liquid fentanyl at the hospital where she worked. According to court documents, Marshall, a registered nurse who previously was employed in the interventional radiology unit of a hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan, removed liquid fentanyl and replaced it with saline solution in July and August of 2020. On August 20, 2020, another nurse working in the interventional radiology unit recognized that a 72-year-old cancer patient undergoing a percutaneous chest tube placement procedure did not receive the expected pain relief from the liquid fentanyl that was administered at the outset of the procedure. A subsequent investigation by the hospital’s staff pharmacist revealed that several vials of fentanyl in the unit’s automated medication dispensing machines had caps that appeared glued back on the vials. Hospital records revealed that Marshall checked out doses of fentanyl for patients 14 times from in July and August of 2020 but then canceled the transactions and purportedly returned the fentanyl back into the interventional radiology unit’s inventory. FDA laboratory examination of the vials with the glued caps revealed needle punctures consistent with tampering, and laboratory testing demonstrated that the vials were substantially diluted, containing 3% or less of the amount of reported fentanyl.
