Inside sources within Asante have since disclosed details surrounding the reported deaths, per NBC5 News. It is alleged that up to 10 patients died of infections contracted at the hospital.
The sources claim the infections were caused by a nurse who purportedly substituted medication with tap water.
It is alleged that the nurse was attempting to conceal the misuse of the hospital’s pain medication supply — specifically fentanyl — and intensive care unit patients were injected with tap water, causing infections that resulted in fatalities.
Medford police have confirmed their active investigation into the situation at the hospital but have refrained from providing specific details.
The sources indicate that the unsterile tap water led to pseudomonas, a dangerous infection, especially for individuals in poor health, commonly found in a hospital’s ICU.
So that nurse will be charged with 10 counts of murder on top of the federal drug crimes, right? …Right?
actually, probably yeah
probably something like involuntary manslaughter as opposed to literal premeditated murder, but yes serious jail time is warranted
In my state I think “reckless manslaugher” might be apt:
-
You caused the death of another person; and
-
You were aware of and showed a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death.
Or how about first degree murder
Murder has to have the intent to kill someone AFAIK, this is “just” intentionally doing something that you know can (instead of will) kill someone. (it’s a fine distinction)
Murder doesn’t require direct intent to kill. Knowingly and/or purposefully doing something you know can kill people can result in murder charges if someone dies. Recklessness can be a factor.
A medical professional knows that injecting tap water can be fatal, so by doing so purposefully and knowingly, the act absolutely meets the definition of attempted murder, especially since this behavior was happening repeatedly at a large enough scale to cause multiple deaths. Likewise, those deaths absolutely meet the definition of murder.
And while it would be a stretch, first degree murder isn’t off the table, since these actions appear very deliberately pre-planned with the intent of stealing drugs. Planning ahead of time, as a medical professional, to do things that you know can kill people, does meet the definition of premeditation.
There’s also felony murder, where if someone dies in the commission of a felony, murder charges can be included with the other crime(s). Stealing drugs from a hospital is a felony, as is intentionally fraudulently injecting patients with non-medical/non-sterile liquids, though it doesn’t appear that this is possible in Oregon, specifically.
It would seem to me that doing something you know will kill someone is the same as intentionally killing someone. A trained nurse can’t plead ignorance in this case.
It’s really no different than pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger.
From my perspective that’s premeditated murder in the first degree.
That’s why I highlighted between can kill and will kill. Tap water injections can kill (with a reasonably high chance of survival if caught in time with the right medical equipment at hand). (Again, IANAL/AFAIK)
Sounds right.
-
I dunno, the one who did the fertility clinic at Yale just got her license back…
jesus christ, what a fucked up court system we have…
at any rate, the incredibly evil nurse from yale at least refilled them with sterile saline solution, and didn’t kill 10 people… or any people…
i think that’ll make a difference…
Yes. The nursing profession doesn’t fuck around with this kind of shit.
Removed by mod
Yes, because then they can avoid any liability for the business as well as avoiding blame for the administrators who are guilty of 8 negligent homicides because they ignored the 8 after the second death that meant there was definitely something more than a freak accident going on
Well yeah. It’s not like she’s a cop
deleted by creator
Why the fuck would they use tap water when sterile saline flushes are all over the place.
Presumably because the saline quantities were tracked and documented just like the fentanyl was. Tap water isn’t a medical supply. Still completely fucking heinous either way.
No hospital would be able to run by being restrictive with flushes. You just need to use so many of them for IV management and drug administration alone, not to mention all the other stuff we use them for. Essentially every time you put something into an IV line, you need to flush it to get the medication to the patient and you need to periodically flush it to keep it patent. I will document them for Inputs/Outputs with someone who has a heart/kidney problem, but that’s as far as it goes. Billing wise, it’s subsumed under how they bill for “nursing” as an average, so it’s not tracked for that either.
Yeah I was in the hospital a few weeks ago and had an IV drip in both arms. They were constantly flushing both lines, didn’t seem like they tracked or cared how many got used.
I do think tap water is worse. These are people with medical experience, a big part of whose job is making sure they use sterile stuff. They know better. There’s no excuse. This is not just accidental
Are we questioning the intelligence of a person stealing vital medication from patients and swapping it for something else?
I’m just amazed. It’s frankly easier to use a flush than fooling with a sink. You need a flush anyway to administer the medication and I’d imagine most folks diverting IV meds are smuggling them out after transferring them into an empty flush in the first place. It almost makes me wonder if who did it isn’t a nurse. Like a pharm tech doing a batch of them at a sink before loading the pyxis.
Covering their tracks most likely.
With a trail of dead patients?
Yeah, gotta hide their theft.
Honestly worked pretty well. Not many are as concerned about the theft as they are about the dead people.
Probably because they aren’t filling the containers at work, where they could be caught.
Instead, they steal an empty container, take it home, fill it with water, bring it to work, swap it with a fentanyl container, take it home, use the fentanyl, fill the container with water, bring it to work, etc.
But even still why not use a flush to fill it. They are prefilled and everywhere. I’m a nurse and have worked with nurses caught diverting. This is extra fucked up. Put this guy under the jail.
Saline in american hospitals probably costs $1000 per bucket.
Or even just distilled water. Buy a jug for a couple bucks at the supermarket or distill it yourself for a few pennies worth of electricity. The woman didn’t deserve her degree if she thought tap water was safe to inject.
They wanted to get caught out of guilt
Rogue hospital staff reselling fentanyl to fentheads for $$$? Colour me surprised!
This is nothing compared to the literal meth lab in a Riverside hospital. I want to say it was the late 90s
- The Retrievals* is a great limited-run podcast about women suffering pain when a nurse was siphoning off fentanyl for personal use and replacing it with saline. Just wanted to shout out a tangential thing.
The sources claim the infections were caused by a nurse who purportedly substituted medication with tap water.
Not even tangential, from this quote it appears to be the exact same situation - a nurse diverting the supply possibly for their own addiction (“attempting to conceal … misuse” certainly sounds like addiction rather than resale):
The sources claim the infections were caused by a nurse who purportedly substituted medication with tap water. It is alleged that the nurse was attempting to conceal the misuse of the hospital’s pain medication supply — specifically fentanyl — and intensive care unit patients were injected with tap water, causing infections that resulted in fatalities.
As awful as diversion is, and as awful as the choice to use tap water was…can we talk about why the tap water is full of pathogenic Pseudomonas?
Tap water is full of stuff that is never harmful for people to drink. Injecting it in your veins, though, is a very very bad idea making me wonder how the hell this nurse got her license. You can’t be THAT stupid
Seriously, couldn’t even be bothered to find some saline so these people in agonizing pain didn’t also have to die of terrible blood infections?
I feel for all the other responsible medical workers who are already dealing with the most ornary customers in the world. This nurse, if they were aware, and all complicit staff have fucked their colleagues over.
I agree that tap water def shouldn’t go into your veins. I also recently did a six month long study on Pseudomonas, and pathogenic Pseudomonas specifically, and feel like I know enough about this bacterial family to be freaked out that that’s what was in the water and killed the people.
wonder how the hell this nurse got her license. You can’t be THAT stupid
Addiction changes people until they don’t even recognize themselves. It has nothing to do with smart vs stupid. They were obviously smart and competent enough to be given a license. It’s just that the person who did this doesn’t even resemble the person who got their nursing license anymore. If they’re able to get sober someday, they’ll be horrified at having to live with this the rest of their life.
There’s a reason addiction is considered a disease. The problem is when people mistake this explanation as an excuse for the things people do while in their addictions. It doesn’t excuse it. I just wish more people would make an effort to understand how addiction actually works because if we made any effort as a society instead of constantly playing the bootstrap/blame game, we could deal with it more effectively and prevent shit like this.
Also I don’t know anything about what’s in tap water, but when addicts use IV drugs that’s pretty much what they’re mixed with. Obviously there’s a lot of infections in that population, but also people who do it every day without tap water killing them.
Just because you can injest something safely doesn’t mean it’s safe to inject. Your stomach acid and enzymes kill many pathogens in low concentrations so the fact that you can’t safely inject tap water doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the water.
Additionally I’m sure the water facet used to get the tap water wasn’t sterilized either. You wouldn’t want to touch a syringe to your water spigot before using it I’m sure, let alone inject the unsterilized water from it.
Water for injections has super strict requirements for a reason.
Toilet water is not allowed. Water from the bowl at the dog park, also out. Voss is a maybe.
We do not for the same reason environments you live in also have Staphylococcus everywhere and it’s impossible to control but assuming you have an average working body and regularly wash your hands before touching things like a toilet handle and then your face you should be pretty safe. Your skin as the largest protective organ and immune system protect you from this. this goes the same for the assumption that you would ingest water as expected and your entire digestive system protects you a lot from what is in water. They do test water but they don’t test it for things you would come into contact when injecting which bypasses a lot of what your body would do already to protect yourself.
This is why some products like netti potties might suggest distilled or boiled water before filling as it’s not a common way to consume water.
The opiate, fentanyl and meth epidemics are eugenics from the top down with how they’re laser targeted to certain locales that have been divested from. The healthcare industry is ripe with corruption by design. More for them, less for you, that includes years on your life.
it’s not targeted, it’s just that drugs seem like a better idea the more miserable you are to begin with… so divested locales have it worse.
also, the poorer you are the better drug dealing seems.
It is targeted in the sense that conservative areas are less likely to have treatment programs, drug safety testing programs, clean needle programs, or safe use sites.
Are you suggesting that conservatives are actively supporting and advocating for public health and mitigation measures such as you mentioned but are not getting them as part of a targeted campaign?
No, I’m suggesting conservatives are actively supporting and advocating for the continued suffering and death of the poor who are overwhelmingly minorities.
deleted by creator
They call it Methford for a reason.
