DRUG DIVERSIONS: the dirty little secret everywhere in health care | Vancouver Sun - 0 views
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February 15, 2016 |
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Drug diversion – a more polite term for theft of narcotics by hospital employees, nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals – is the dirty little secret hospital administrators and health leaders prefer not to talk about.
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The problem is so pervasive that a new non-profit organization has sprung up in the U.S. to help hospitals outsmart their internal thieves. It’s called the International Health Facility Diversion Association (IHFDA) and its inaugural international conference will take place in Cincinnati, Ohio in September.
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As I have since learned, drug diversion can occur in most, if not all, hospitals, nursing homes and other medical facilities where highly addictive narcotics like morphine are dispensed.
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The overdose death of a care aide at Vancouver General Hospital proves the need for better methods to detect and prevent theft and abuse of hospital medications, coroner Timothy Wiles said in his report Wednesday.
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Wiles said Kerri O’Keefe, 36, who had worked in the emergency room for about 15 years, died in her Surrey condo last summer from respiratory failure after injecting a stolen hospital anesthesia drug.
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As well, nurses and doctors will be expected to squirt leftover medications into a slush pail that’s a mixture of all drug residuals instead of using sharps containers. “We are looking to make these (remaining) drugs un-usable,” she said. Drug wasting is the term used in health care for discarding partly used medications. Some medical centres squirt leftovers into a bin filled with Kitty Litter to deter anyone from stealing the contents.