Eastern Connecticut |
For 48-year-old Kate, two things run in the family: nursing and addiction.
After overcoming alcohol and cocaine addiction in her early 20s to become a registered nurse in her late 20s, she thought she was in the clear. But within four years of getting her license, a downward spiral that went from a pelvic fracture to an ugly divorce found Kate sneaking into the waste medication closet of the nursing home where she worked, lifting oxycodone and Xanax. Kate agreed to share her story on the condition The Day maintains her anonymity. "It was kind of subtle," Kate said of the years leading up to when she was caught stealing drugs. "I never had the idea, 'well I think I'm going to end up being an addict,' but ultimately that's where it led." Now more than a year-and-a-half sober, Kate said people still are surprised when they hear her story, wondering how a nurse could wind up an addict. But Kate said the access nurses have, coupled with their mentality, should make it less than shocking. "In nursing, we're taught that medication solves problems," she said. "That's what we do. We change meds. We start meds. We stop meds. It's very much an ingrained idea in many nurses' thought processes. Even when I was using I was acutely aware of other nurses with similar problems — you know, it takes one to know one." It's hard to say just how many nurses are affected by substance abuse, according to Maureen Sullivan Dinnan, executive director of Health Assistance Intervention Education Network, or HAVEN. But, based on her experience with the confidential health network for medical professionals, she said nurses suffer substance abuse disorders at least at the same rate as the general population. According to a state Department of Public Health roster, 384 of about 62,063 registered nurses with active licenses, or 0.62 percent, have licenses that have been disciplined in the past or currently are suspended, restricted, on probation or facing charges. The roster doesn't specify what led to disciplinary action for those 384 nurses, but of the 266 individuals who have been sanctioned in the past five years, at least 57 percent underwent or are undergoing disciplinary action for a substance abuse-related case. Many of the nurses' records tell a similar story: They diverted a controlled substance — Vicodin, Percocet, Valium, Xanax, diazepam, oxycodone — from a medical center's stock or directly from a patient on one or more occasions and fudged records to cover it up. In one case, a nurse overdosed while on the job. Read more at http://www.theday.com/local/20160312/substance-abuse-nurses-arent-immune.
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ABOUTA selection of stories I wrote as a breaking news and police reporter for The Day in New London, Conn. Archives
July 2019
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