Nurse Re-uses Dirty Equipment

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/08/rogue.nurse.diseases/index.html

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- A Fort Lauderdale nurse has resigned and more 1,800 patients have been notified that they may have been exposed to diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, after the nurse allegedly admitted to the hospital that she used disposable IV equipment on multiple patients, a violation of safety standards.


Reuse of disposable equipment violates "universal, standard" safety policy, a hospital official noted.

I would love to get inside her head to know why she did this. It's not like she was paying for the equipment herself. Not that that's an excuse...

I hope no one gets seriously ill from this. And I hope her nurse's license is forever revoked, no matter where she lives.

oh_gal said:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/08/rogue.nurse.diseases/index.html

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- A Fort Lauderdale nurse has resigned and more 1,800 patients have been notified that they may have been exposed to diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, after the nurse allegedly admitted to the hospital that she used disposable IV equipment on multiple patients, a violation of safety standards.


Reuse of disposable equipment violates "universal, standard" safety policy, a hospital official noted.

I would love to get inside her head to know why she did this. It's not like she was paying for the equipment herself. Not that that's an excuse...

I hope no one gets seriously ill from this. And I hope her nurse's license is forever revoked, no matter where she lives.

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Wow. I can't even imagine what might compel a person to do such a thing. I would go a step further and say she should be prosecuted to the fullest extend allowable by law for reckless endangerment.

Unbelievable.

ChasingMoxie said:

Wow. I can't even imagine what might compel a person to do such a thing. I would go a step further and say she should be prosecuted to the fullest extend allowable by law for reckless endangerment.

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She hasn't been arrested. She just resigned from her job after being outed.
I hope they can come up with something to prosecute her for----she violated the trust of the physicians, the hospital and most especially of the patients.

I wish that such an act was considered criminal under our laws, but I don't think it is.

Hoppy

hoppyfrog said:

I wish that such an act was considered criminal under our laws, but I don't think it is.

Hoppy

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I think they might get her for Reckless Endangerment. Plus a host of violations enough to keep her from ever working as a nurse again.

She will definately lose her nursing license. She needs to be prosecuted as well. The odds of her spreading something, especially Hep C, are very high. I've worked in hospitals and there certainly is no shortage of sterile needles. She did this with the intent to injure someone.

was probably too lazy to change it! Wonder how they found out. Sorry didn't read the article.

Im sure if anyone does get ill from her obvious mistakes the least they will charge her with would be reckless endangerment. If anyone gets sick and dies from this, anything involving HIV is a possibility, she will probably get charged with something alot worse than reckless endangerment. And in my opinion she deserves it!

How can this even happen? Seems like the nurse would have had to know that reusing the needles was not allowed!!! How scary.

I'm an RN working in a hospital, and every moment I work I am bombarded with infection control policies, protocols, signs in the bathrooms, in the hallway, in the patient's rooms. In nursing school, we were literally brainwashed about hand hygiene, sterile technique, and that EVERYTHING is disposable except for the patient.

That's to give you an idea of what this nurse had to OVERCOME in herself to make the choices she made to reuse equipment. That it even occurred to her to reuse equipment boggles my mind.

This is obviously a disturbed person, to be able to do this in spite of the absolute onslaught of material we encounter every single shift we work. She's got to be nuts. And all those years of splendid patient care? No way. Unless she had a head injury and brain damage, a person who consciously chooses to reuse equipment is NOT a person who give quality care. She just never got caught enough.

What would make a person choose to do what she did? What is the payoff? It's not even a great way to infect people, if that was her motive. Laziness? Too lazy to spike a new bag of saline and prime a new line? How could a nurse even give herself the OPTION of doing anything else? That's what tells me she is disturbed, and more will come to light. More disciplinary stuff, more "incidents" . . . this didn't happen in a vaccuum.

Amazing.

I called my aunt last night and she told about this. She was absolutely shocked that this had happened.
She has been a pediatric nurse for years (I am forbidden to say how many), and is nearing retirement. She said she has seen some things in her career that have made her shake her head or raise an eyebrow, but never anything like this. She said there is no way that it was an accident or an act of ignorance. She had to have been planning to do it, if even a student nurse had seen her reuse a syringe or IV catheter, they would have turned her in. She knew exactly what she was doing and the possible ramifications. I wonder if she had a pattern, only doing it to the ones that she liked or didn't like. Maybe an acting out of a type of Munchausens? I know that usually happens against one's own kids, but maybe she didn't have any? I don't know, but there is a psychopathology here that is different from sociopathy and much worse than just laziness. I have a feeling that when this finally gets broken fully open, there will have been signs that were covered up or ignored, PeteyGirl is right, this didn't happen in a vaccuum.

Many prayers to the victims and their families.

Dani_md said:

was probably too lazy to change it! Wonder how they found out. Sorry didn't read the article.

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Another person observed her re-using 1/2 i.v. bag of solution after a stress test.

chemcopout said:

Im sure if anyone does get ill from her obvious mistakes the least they will charge her with would be reckless endangerment. If anyone gets sick and dies from this, anything involving HIV is a possibility, she will probably get charged with something alot worse than reckless endangerment. And in my opinion she deserves it!

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Seems to me this would most certainly qualify as "depraved indifference" Murder 2. According to the Florida statutes:

(2) The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life or as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.