A nurse who had worked at an outpatient surgical center in Florida has been found guilty of stealing fentanyl and substituting saline for the potent pain medication.
This nurse was previously employed at the center.
Florida Surgical Center Nurse Admits Medication Tampering
According to the records from the federal court in Fort Pierce, Catherine Shannon Dunton, who is 54 years old, entered a guilty plea on Tuesday to the charge of tampering with a consumer product.
At a hearing on June 27, she might be sentenced to as much as ten years in jail.
Based on the documents filed with the court, Dunton was employed as a circulating nurse at The Surgical Center in Jensen Beach between the months of September 2021 and April 2022.
This facility is located approximately 72 kilometers (45 miles) north of West Palm Beach.
Employees at the center who were doing an inventory discovered the missing medications, and officials said that video surveillance was utilized to identify Dunton as a suspect in the case.
Prosecutors claim that Dunton began injecting herself with fentanyl sometime in February of the previous year. They say she used vials of the drug.
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Nurse Admits to Diluting Fentanyl in Nearly 450 Vials
Investigators claim that she switched out the narcotic painkiller in approximately 450 vials with saline solution in order to avoid being caught and that she then brought the contaminated vials back to the center so that they could be used during outpatient surgical procedures.
An anesthesiologist from the Food and Drug Administration was called as a witness by the prosecutors in order to support their contention that it is not safe for surgical patients to receive diluted fentanyl.
According to the officials, inadequate pain control can also lead to an increased risk of heart attack or stroke in people who are already at a high risk. Also, tampering with the vial offered a risk of contamination, which may result in infection either during the surgical procedure or after it was completed.
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