[Judith Anne]

"...until you let the staff know you're more dangerous than they are..."

In addition to signing off narcotics by two nurses counting them at the beginning and ending of all three shifts, in our facility if there is a discrepancy, the nurse on whose shift it occurred does NOT leave the hospital until it's found. Any nurse suspected of ANY narcotics pilfering can, in our facility, be held by security until the police arrive. Even one pill, one dose. A urine and blood test can be demanded, and must be given or the nurse is immediately fired, on the spot. So in addition to his/her problems with the law, they have no job and an extremely bad reference.

In our community, no nurses that I have ever heard of have been involved in narcotics, but I do know of two doctors and an EMT.

Any nurse who would say such a thing to you does not deserve the title. That's cruel and unthinkable.

[Bonaparte]

Thank you, Judith Anne. What you've described should be SOP everywhere. Of course, in the incident described in the article, a narcotic was charted as given so no discrepancy would appear. The count would look correct and no alarm would be raised. Glick was caught because she did this sort of thing habitually and people noticed the pattern of inadequate pain relief, ie. the same patient, given the same dose of the same drug by the same route consistently got relief on the other two shifts, but somehow not on her shift -- and on her days off, the same patient had no complaints of inadequate pain relief on any shift. That's how she got caught.