Since March, Becker's has covered seven cases of opioids and other medications being replaced with saline and other substances, all of them perpetrated by nurses.
- A Tea, S.D., nurse was indicted for replacing opioids and other medications with different medications.
- A former Fuquay-Varina, N.C., nurse was sentenced to 48 months in prison and three years of supervised release for tampering with painkillers for surgery patients.
- A former nurse at SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital in Janesville, Wis., pleaded guilty to tampering with vials of fentanyl while working at the facility in 2021.
- A Detroit nurse was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to tampering with vials and syringes of liquid painkillers intended for patients in the critical care unit.
- A Florida nurse pleaded guilty to replacing fentanyl with saline in nearly 450 vials.
- A former nurse has been sentenced to three years in prison for tampering with vials of injectable pain medications while working in the emergency department at Franciscan Health Crawfordsville (Ind.).
- Caitlin Ashley Evans, a former nurse who admitted to diverting opioids and exchanging the drugs for saline while working at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., was sentenced to three years of probation.