What Happened
A registered nurse at the University of Maryland Medical Center Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Baltimore was convicted and sentenced for diverting morphine.
The nurse was assigned to a 10-year-old patient recovering from open heart surgery and documented an 8:30 a.m intravenous morphine dose but did not document a later dose she told another nurse she had given. The nurse was observed with bruising and bleeding consistent with intravenous drug use and later refused a drug screening; she pleaded guilty to obtaining morphine by fraud and received a suspended sentence with probation and healthcare-program exclusion.
What the Record Shows
Sentenced to 1 year, suspending all but 30 days, with two years of supervised probation; prohibited from caring for children during probation; excluded from state and federal healthcare programs
Why It Matters for Diversion Programs
This entry comes from a primary source rather than a federal enforcement release, and it is recorded as reported: diverted morphine from a pediatric intensive care unit; documented an 8:30 a.m. intravenous morphine dose for a patient but did not document a later dose she told another nurse she had given; pleaded guilty to obtaining morphine by fraud. Board and news records are a lagging indicator - by the time a licensing authority or a reporter learns of a diversion, the diversion was normally detected internally first, which makes each entry a signal that inventory reconciliation, waste observation or dispensing oversight failed earlier.