Hospital nurse charged with stealing drugs, falsifying records
Healthcare Auditing Weekly, August 7, 2007
A Mineola, FL nurse was arrested and charged last week with stealing narcotics--including powerful painkillers--from the hospital in which she worked, the North Country Gazette reports.
The charges also allege that Phaedra J. White, 41, falsified records at the hospital--Mercy Medical Center in Rockville, FL--to cover her thefts.
According to the district attorney, the investigation began when Mercy noted questionable entries in the emergency department Pyxis machine, a locked and secure cabinet which contains a facility's controlled substances. The facility's internal investigation and audit revealed that more than 800 doses of narcotics--including painkillers morphine, meperidine, and hydromorphone--were removed from the machine, unauthorized, by the defendant.
To cover up these withdrawals and keep inventory records from raising suspicions, White documented in hospital records that the narcotics taken were ordered by physicians, and that they were to be administered to specific patients. In fact, there were no such orders for these patients, the report states.
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