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MUNCIE — Illinois State Police found a mini-pharmacy including opioids when they stopped registered nurse Matthew Kinder’s recreational vehicle near St. Louis on Sept. 2, 2015.
According to the Indiana State Board of Nursing, the “many alarming items” seized from the RV included injection devices containing the opioid pain medications morphine and hydromorphone along with hydrocodone pain pills in addition to vials, pills and injection devices containing anesthesia, nitroglycerin, skin-numbing medication, antibiotics, female hormones, high-blood-pressure medication, sedatives, anti-seizure medication, and a muscle relaxer.
Also in the vehicle, police found naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses.
Kinder, 36, of Parker City, is one of many nurses from across the state accused in recent months of opioid theft or abuse, including Melissa Colwell, an RN from the Union County town of West College Corner who overdosed in southern Indiana last month.
When paramedics arrived, Colwell was going unconscious and a male with her already was unconscious, according to Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller’s office. Paramedics administered two doses of naloxone to Colwell, which caused her to become alert and oriented. She and the male refused to be transported to the hospital for treatment despite being advised the naloxone could wear off, resulting in more unconsciousness or death.
The attorney general’s office is asking the nursing board to suspend Colwell’s license on grounds she is unfit to practice.
Kinder was convicted in Illinois of two counts of unlawful possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to three years of probation back home in Indiana’s Randolph County.
According to the attorney general, Kinder’s employer, St. Vincent Regional Hospital in Anderson, learned of his criminal record when his probation officer contacted the hospital to verify his employment, after which he was fired. The hospital quoted Kinder as saying he stole the drugs from his former employer by putting any medications ready for waste into his pockets and taking them home.
Kinder, whose license the attorney general has asked the nursing board to suspend, also allegedly failed to disclose his criminal record to the nursing board.
This past week, Zoeller hosted the seventh annual Prescription Drug Abuse & Heroin Symposium. At last year’s event, experts said more than 16,000 people die in the United States annually from opioid overdoses; opioid prescriptions dispensed by U.S.pharmacies nearly tripled from 76 million in 1991 to 207 million in 2013; 75 percent of heroin addicts started with prescription opioid abuse; the side effects of opioid abuse include brain damage; the typical injection drug user is under 30, white, suburban, as likely to be female as male, and is driven by the increase in prescription opioids; Ibuprofen is a better pain killer than opioids; and the opioid epidemic is linked to human trafficking, hepatitis and HIV. Opiates are addictive because they raise dopamine levels in the brain.
The state nursing board recently suspended the license of Sherri Waskom, an RN from Muncie, for alleged diversion of opioids from nursing homes, for opioid addiction/abuse/dependency, for false statements to the nursing board, and for failing to disclose terminations on employment applications.
According to the nursing board:
Waskom was terminated from AMG Specialty Hospital, Muncie, for suspected drug diversion and refusing to submit to a urine drug screen. She was then terminated from Edgewater Woods, Anderson, after being disciplined/counseled at least six times related to medication discrepancies. When she was then hired at Bethel Point Health and Rehabilitation Center, Muncie, she listed AMG as her most recent employer and failed to disclose AMG had fired her. She was later fired from Bethel Point for falsifying her job application.
When she applied to work at The Waters of Muncie, she claimed she still was employed at Bethel Point but planned to resign, and she also reported she had worked previously at AMG but failed to disclose she had been fired from there. She was then fired from The Waters of Muncie for suspected diversion of drugs.
During the 16 months she was employed at Edgewater Woods, Bethel Point, and The Waters of Muncie, Waskom was enrolled in the Indiana State Nurses Assistance Program (ISNAP) and was diagnosed with opioid dependency. During that period, three of her drug screens were abnormal, two were positive for opiates, and she falsely claimed she was not working in a health care setting.
After she tested positive for opiates on March, 25, 2015, Waskom provided documentation that she had received hydrocodone from a Walmart pharmacy, but the documentation showed she had received the hydrocodone on Jan. 27, 2014. She tested positive for opiates again on Aug, 5, 2015. A month later, ISNAP referred a “significant non-compliance” memo to the attorney general’s office regarding the discovery that Waskom had been providing ISNAP false information since the day she signed her recovery agreement.
Waskom declined comment for this story.
Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.