Inside sources within Asante have since disclosed details surrounding the reported deaths, per NBC5 News. It is alleged that up to 10 patients died of infections contracted at the hospital.
The sources claim the infections were caused by a nurse who purportedly substituted medication with tap water.
It is alleged that the nurse was attempting to conceal the misuse of the hospital’s pain medication supply — specifically fentanyl — and intensive care unit patients were injected with tap water, causing infections that resulted in fatalities.
Medford police have confirmed their active investigation into the situation at the hospital but have refrained from providing specific details.
The sources indicate that the unsterile tap water led to pseudomonas, a dangerous infection, especially for individuals in poor health, commonly found in a hospital’s ICU.
Since she was stealing drugs I would imagine that it was due to saline being inventory controlled and would have further raised suspicion.
I work as a hospital supervisor. I honestly don’t know of any facility where you can’t get saline iv flushes. Most nurses have pockets full of them each shift. If you didn’t have that for some reason you could get sterile saline and draw it up yourself, also would be easily obtainable.
My only thought here is that the person didn’t want to leave the room when administering drugs and so they used tap water as an easily sourced replacement for the drugs they was stealing since there is a sink is every room (at least in most hospital rooms).
The real answer here is that drug addiction overrides rational thought and they either didn’t know or didn’t care that tap water is not safe at all for iv administration.
We see lots of cases of diversion unfortunately because these drugs are just so damn addictive and there are only so many safe guards you can put in place to protect against it. At the end of the day no matter how many checks there are you will eventually have a clinical staff member drawing up the drugs and administering it. As long as this remains the case you will have people that abuse that weak link in the chain.
That’s the most likely answer.
I hope it’s didn’t care. I hope nurses know it’s not safe.
Jesus, I won’t even let a patient drink tap water in a hospital. Drinking water only from the filtered dispenser in the kitchen or bottled.
I buy sterile saline all the time. I think they probably just didn’t give a damn.
Imagine the pain those people went through when they didn’t get their pain meds.
Fuck that nurse.
New horror unlocked; medical care professionals injecting saline instead of pain meds. Complain of pain, anesthesiologist concludes I’m either faking or resistant. So either I wither in pain or they up the dosage. Let’s say the latter happens once or twice and then at shift change the new nurse isn’t a druggie piece of shit and gives the adjusted dosage in full and I overdose, maybe die.
There are other, more sanctioned horrors if you’re ever in the position to need meds to deal with indescribable pain in a hospital.
I once had major abdominal surgery and was on a morphine drip. Unfortunately I have a genetic defect that means I don’t metabolise drugs well, so even strong meds don’t work well and I’ve woken under anaesthetia twice.
It turns out that if you push the button on the morphine machine too many times, its software assumes you’re a drug seeker and starts giving you less. So the more you need it to keep the pain relatively tolerable, the less it will give you.
You don’t even have to have that genetic condition to wind up in a hell of the software’s making. I only learned that was the issue after being at a user experience conference where one of the presenters (pretty sure it was Alan Cooper but it may have been Steve Wozniak) talked about his experience with that machine after an accident that motivated him to research why his pain meds were inadequate, and how medical user experience is horribly abysmal.
As far as I know, nothing has been done to address issues like that since.
Yeah that sucks. I’ve been on the other end working with paramedics, nurses and docs and there are quite a few of those drug seekers. Like most things a few people have to ruin it for the rest.
I’d rather 100 drug seekers get high than one person have to go through that kind of unrelenting, soul wrenching pain. There’s got to be a better way.
Yeah that was my opinion until they described the very real risk of that high ending lives, and if you were administrating then your license is on the line for every death in your care. Should be a better way but now I understand the caution.
That shit happens with surprising regularity. This nurse got caught because they uaed tap water and people died from infections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html
I know an eye for an eye and eventually we’re all blind, but I wish these people would have to deal with the pain they put on others.
Yes, it is partially this. They didn’t use what was on hand because of inventory control, but they didn’t care enough to buy some and sneak it into the scenario. This isn’t some sort of thought out heist or something. They are most likely an addict and this is a quick easy way to get drugs while being not very likely to make things more suspicious. Users inject with tap water all the time, it is super rare for the tap water to be the reason for infection and other medical complications. So she probably didn’t even realize this could be a possibility.
If it’s that rare, I think the obvious inference is that she pulled the same shit on a lot more patients than just the 10 who died.
Oh guaranteed. Depending on how long her addiction out paced her income it could be 100s of patients or, maybe, dozens of patients 100s of times.
I may buy this idea for any ordinary junkie, but this is a nurse. If a nurse doesn’t know understand the need for injected things to be sterile, I’d say there’s an even bigger problem than a junkie killing people.
I have had nurses tell me shit that demonstrates a massive ignorance of what I would assume would be basic knowledge for a nurse in my life. I would not doubt that there are tons of nurses out there that think tap water, while not as stringently regulated as IV prepped fluids, would be fine. I have seen many people use for decades and none of them had this happen. All of those people primarily used tap water. Every time someone had an infection, or other disease, it was from re-used needles that weren’t sanitized.
New horror unlocked; medical care professionals injecting saline instead of pain meds. Complain of pain, anesthesiologist concludes I’m either faking or resistant. So either I wither in pain or they up the dosage. Let’s say the latter happens once or twice and then at shift change the new nurse isn’t a druggie piece of shit and gives the adjusted dosage in full and I overdose, maybe die.
But you can just walk into any drug store (probably some grocery stores) and buy enough to swap out the amount of fentanyl they are injecting I would imagine (since it’s potent stuff). Just someone that clearly didn’t think the plan all the way through, and likely has some debt or driving factor clouding their judgement.
They didn’t use what was on hand because of inventory control, but they didn’t care enough to buy some and sneak it into the scenario. This isn’t some sort of thought out heist or something. They are most likely an addict and this is a quick easy way to get drugs while being not very likely to make things more suspicious. Users inject with tap water all the time, it is super rare for the tap water to be the reason for infection and other medical complications. So she probably didn’t even realize this could be a possibility.
I’m willing to bet you can just buy saline. Or make it at home, as long as it is kept sterile.
Making it at home would have the same issues as tap water, sterile saline is probably autoclaved to sterilize it. But it is trivial to buy and even from the hospital supply I highly doubt it would be noticed if you wrote that you used an extra 10mL here and there.
Gamma irradiated. And we definitely don’t track how many saline flushes we use. That would be such a futile chore, Sisyphus would pity you.
You can give yourself a brain eating amoeba infection using tap water in a neti pot
Yeah, my ex used one of these things a few times. She wouldn’t read directions, or listen to me after I did, so just used tap water. Luckily it never turned into a regular thing