A registered nurse (RN) who allegedly stole pain medications last year from residents in a Minnesota nursing home had her license suspended for a third time. The Minnesota Board of Nursing suspended the RN’s nursing license on August 3, 2023. The board had previously suspended her license in 2014 and 2010 after she stole prescription pain medications from residents.
The third suspension came 11 months after the RN was allegedly caught stealing pain medications from seven residents at the facility where she worked. Her supervisor, the director of nursing (DON), had become concerned about discrepancies in the narcotics log used to track medications given to residents. The DON was aware of the RN’s drug diversion at her previous job.
The nursing home performed an audit which found that during September 2022, the RN allegedly took medications from at least seven residents consisting of 31 pills of oxycodone, 11 hydromorphone, 11 hydrocodone, 5 lorazepam, 6 hydromorphone pills, and 20ml of liquid hydromorphone. She was subsequently fired.
A Minnesota Department of Health investigative report from December substantiated that she had signed out opioid medications that were never administered to residents. In an interview with a police officer, the RN said she had only a fuzzy recollection of dispensing the drugs and blamed the charting discrepancy on a medication error or the nurse who followed her shift.
Compliance Perspective
Issue
Experts estimate that 10–15 percent of our nation’s population struggles with impairment from alcohol or drug dependency. Nurses, as part of this statistic, are distinct due to their ability to access drugs in the workplace. Because as many as one in ten nurses could be affected by a substance use disorder, it is critical that each facility implements a proactive diversion-prevention program. The consequences of failure to do this include a negative impact on residents’ quality of care, legal and ethical concerns, and potential for high scope and severity citations once a diversion problem is uncovered. Nurses who divert medications have developed a number of ways to conceal diversion. Efforts must identify the types of medications most likely to be taken, signs that diversion has taken place, and signs of impairment.
Discussion Points
- Review your policies and procedures on preventing, identifying, and responding to drug diversion. Update as needed.
- Train appropriate staff on actions that can be taken to prevent, identify, and respond to any suspicion of drug diversion. Provide education on the impact of drug diversion on residents as a form of abuse and neglect, staff responsibility to report concerns immediately, and the consequences of theft of controlled substances. Document that the trainings occurred, and place the signed document in each employee’s education file. Med-Net Academy (MNA) offers all clients three PowerPoint training programs in our new category of Substance Use. Visit MNA to access all three. Additionally, a program titled Drug Diversion – What Every Facility Needs to Know is available in the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Category of MNA and is available to all Med-Net clients.
- Periodically audit to ensure that all controlled substances are accounted for each shift, and that proper documentation of controlled substances has occurred. Your consultant pharmacist can be included in this effort.
*This news alert has been prepared by Med-Net Concepts, LLC for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal advice.*
