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DOUGLAS — A nurse at Memorial Hospital of Converse County allegedly took a narcotic painkiller for his own use for nearly nine months, resulting in more than 400 patients receiving a weakened or essentially worthless form of the drug, the Douglas hospital announced Tuesday.
The hospital put the nurse, Ryan Harris, on administrative leave on June 8 after discovering the week before that he had allegedly been diverting Hydromorphone since September, said hospital CEO Ryan Smith.
Smith said Harris had been inserting a syringe into the top of the small vials of Hydromorphone, an opioid painkiller, and removing the drug. He would then replace the missing liquid with saline solution. Smith said it’s unknown how much Hydromorphone that Harris had taken over the nine months but said some vials had been replaced entirely with saline while others were a mixture of the solution and the painkiller.
On June 2, pharmacy staff discovered the issue during a “routine review” of the hospital’s Pyxis Medstation. Harris was called in shortly after and confessed. Fifty-eight vials of Hydromorphone were found to be tampered with in some form.
Harris is currently in Oregon telling his family, Smith said, and Harris told hospital authorities that he would enter treatment. He has not been arrested, though the Douglas Police Department has been alerted.
The Wyoming Board of Nursing suspended the nurse’s license on June 8 and he is not authorized to practice anywhere in the state. Harris, who is on unpaid administrative leave, had been with the hospital for around six years and had no prior incidents, officials said.
Smith said the hospital will have to wait and see if it is at some legal risk from the more than 400 patients who received a diluted or completely ineffective treatment for pain. He said Harris had told hospital staff that he was never under the influence of drugs while on duty at the hospital, where he is a night shift nurse. He was drug tested after he confessed and passed the exam.
Patients who received the drug between Sept. 13 and June 2 may not have received the prescribed dose because certain vials “were compromised by the nurse,” according to the hospital. To assist any patients who received the drug during that period, the hospital set up a phone line at 307-358-7345.
“On behalf of our entire organization, I want to apologize to our employees, community, and, most importantly, to any patient who may have been affected by this nurse’s drug diversion,” CEO Ryan Smith said. “All of our employees and providers have been working very hard to improve our organizational culture and values, and we were all devastated to learn this drug diversion took place here.”
The Wyoming Board of Nursing suspended the nurse’s license on June 8 and he is not authorized to practice anywhere in the state. The nurse was tested for HIV and Hepatitis C and is not infected with either disease, the hospital said.