How do you prove wasting of medication really happened? Do you require witnesses? Is it done under camera? What if it is a doctor, do you do things differently?
There was recently an article about a doctor that was taking morphine to give herself a boost at the end of her shift. The morphine was given to the patients, but instead of taking the remaining dose and wasting it, she took it herself. The article says that this happened more than 200 times over 4 months (Yes, I know the math doesn’t add up unless she had 2 shifts a day for 4 months straight)
You would expect that someone taking this much morphine would have been caught by the system, yet she wasn’t. She was accidentally found by security in a location where she shouldn’t have been, with a bag filled with syringes, and a more detailed search found the anti-nausea drug cyclizine in her possession, used to offset the effects of morphine.
Drug diversion comes in all forms, and while many diverters take drugs during the wasting process, not a lot seem to get caught. It seems pretty easy to divert at wasting time, especially if there isn’t a detailed wasting process, with witnesses. Are they really wasting the drug, water or saline? When do you do wasting? Do you waste before the drug is taken to the patient, only taking the accurate dose into the room (safest in our opinion), or do you waste on return from the patient?
Watching the wasting process with HelioMetrics Rx Diversion can help you spot these diversion wasting issues.