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An outbreak of hepatitis C among Good Samaritan emergency room patients has been linked to a nurse injecting herself with the drug and then using the same needles on patients.
A former emergency department nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup admitted to tampering with vials of hydromorphone and fentanyl intended for patients.
An investigation has determined that an outbreak of hepatitis C virus (HCV) among more than a dozen patients in the hospital’s emergency department was likely caused by 36-year-old nurse Cora Weberg taking some of a patient’s medication intravenously for her own use. The results, and CBS News reported, then injected those patients with the same needle she used herself.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
“Several epidemiological findings in this investigation strongly suggest that Nurse A (Welberg) may have been the source of infection for 12 patients with acute HCV infection. First, she accessed the automated dispensing system more frequently than other staff members, and Admits to diverting a patient’s injected narcotic drug for personal use. Second, after a previous negative test, her serum turned positive for anti-HCV and then tested positive for HCV RNA, indicating recent infection. Finally, Nurse A injected each patient Injections of anesthetics, sedatives, or antihistamines became the only common epidemiological link among the 13 patients with similar HCV genes. The HCV-infected patients who were not cared for by Nurse A were infected with strains that were genetically distant from each other and not related to The HCV 1a strains that infected the 13 patients in this group were widely separated.”
Weberg was on duty from August 4, 2017 to March 23, 2018, but she was only charged on September 1 this year. She could be jailed for up to 10 years and pay a fine of up to $250,000, KIRO7 reported. She also lost or gave up her nursing license in four states, The Daily Beast reported.
Medication diversion is a serious problem for healthcare facilities. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), drug diversion may affect 10% of healthcare workers and cost the healthcare industry up to $72.5 billion annually.