A nurse who was sacked from Auckland's North Shore Hospital has been accused of inappropriately obtaining Oxynorm painkiller capsules.
Oxynorm is a brand of oxycodone, a morphine-like drug. Some people abuse it and this can lead to addiction.
The nurse, Crystal Schlee, did not attend a hearing of two professional misconduct charges against her at the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal in Auckland today.
Matthew McClelland, QC, a lawyer acting for the Nursing Council professional conduct committee which laid the charges, said it is understood Schlee now lives in the United States. Even in her absence, the tribunal must consider if the charges were established.
He told the tribunal the hospital management had found Schlee was responsible for 20 per cent of Oxynorm removals from ward 11, a medical isolation ward, between May 1 and June 6, 2012. By October 2012, ward 11 was using 75 per cent more Oxynorm than the next-highest-using medical ward and Schlee's transactions accounted for 27 per cent of ward 11's use.
Her employment at the Waitemata District Health Board was terminated in October 2012.
The committee lists nine occasions on which it alleges Schlee inappropriately obtained Oxynorm, amounting to nine 5mg capsules and two 10mg capsules.
Drugs on ward 11 are mainly supplied from a Pyxis medicines dispensing machine on which patients' medication charts are loaded electronically by the hospital's pharmacy. Each user has a logon and the system uses fingerprint technology to reduce the possibility of using someone else's password to access the system.
The charges against Schlee include that she misappropriated Oxynorm from the machine and/or falsified entries in patient drug charts and/or used other nurses' login details to access the machine.
On one occasion, Schlee is said to have entered a patient's name on the Pyxis, removed two Oxynorm capsules when she knew, or should have, that the patient had received her dose 90 minutes earlier. She did not administer the drug, instead misappropriating it, and altered an existing entry on the patient's chart by changing the time she received her most recent dose to several hours earlier.
On another day, it is said, Schlee used a colleague's login and operated the Pyxis override function, which is for when a patient's chart hasn't yet been loaded, and must be followed by the user faxing details of the medication obtained. She obtained one capsule of Oxynorm in respect of a patient who wasn't her patient and who hadn't been prescribed the drug. Again, it is alleged, she misappropriated the drug, not having given it to the patient.
A nurse who gave evidence for the committee said a colleague had told him that "some of the other staff on ward 11 were suspicious that Crystal was misappropriating Oxynorm from the Pyxis machine".
- By Martin Johnston of the New Zealand Herald
