Montana Nurse Sentenced for Taking Fentanyl for Personal Use
QAPI Perspective
Staff should receive drug diversion awareness training. Audits need to be in place to ensure shift-to-shift narcotics counts are recorded in the narcotic log and that MARS and TARS are checked routinely for proper medication administration
A Montana nurse, 33, who admitted to stealing fentanyl for his own use, was sentenced to a five-year term of probation with six months in home confinement. The investigation began when the clinic where the nurse worked notified the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it had lost 200 mL of fentanyl from employee pilferage. When confronted with discrepancies, the nurse told law enforcement officers that he would divert fentanyl most times that he worked, removing the fentanyl from the vials and replacing it with saline. He said that if the case was his, he made sure the patients got a full vial along with whatever he had switched. The DEA took into evidence suspected tampered vials of fentanyl, syringes, and vials labeled as saline. The evidence included 22 packages of fentanyl suspected of having been tampered with. A DEA lab tested 15 of the packages and found that no fentanyl remained inside them
