Nurses and narcotics: case studies from Tampa Bay area

Here's what happened in selected cases involving Tampa Bay area nurses who were assigned to the Intervention Project for Nurses, a secret, state-sponsored drug-treatment program. Efforts to reach the nurses by phone and mail were unsuccessful.

From one job to another: Katherine Remel signed a contract in 2004 with the intervention program after her supervisors began suspecting she was stealing and using narcotics. A drug test confirmed it.

After four months of outpatient treatment, the program cleared her to return to nursing, but the hospital later fired her on suspicions she was still stealing drugs.

The program let Remel continue to practice after an evaluation. Her contract prohibited her from joining a staffing agency, but she did anyway, in mid-2007, without telling IPN and without telling the staffing agency she was in the program.

One hospital, Shands, in Gainesville, fired her because of drug-dispensing anomalies, and the staffing agency sent her to Brandon Regional Hospital, where her narcotics use deepened. Her intervention program supervisors didn't find out until May 2008, when she wound up in a crisis detoxification unit.

A state disciplinary report makes no mention that Remel voluntarily relinquished her license in Texas in 2000.

Florida revoked her license.

Pulled from practice four times: Michelle Wilder was a licensed practical nurse in St. Petersburg in 2005 when her supervisors suspected she was stealing the narcotic hydromorphone. In the next 3 1/2 years, intervention program monitors pulled her from practice four times because of repeated positive drug tests.

Each time, they allowed her to return.

Wilder got her more advanced, registered nurse's license early last year. One month later she tested positive for cocaine. She insisted it was the result of a Red Bull energy drink, but eventually she admitted she had relapsed.

Her license was revoked in January.

Taking addiction across the Bay: In March 2007, Debra White was evaluated by an intervention program psychiatrist after she lost her job at Edward White Hospital in St. Petersburg for stealing morphine.

She was told not to work, but took a job at Memorial Hospital in Tampa without telling administrators she was in the intervention program and without telling the program she was working.

She started taking morphine from the hospital in July 2007. The intervention program didn't find out she was working at Memorial until September 2007.

The board suspended her license with the option of undergoing another evaluation. There is no record of whether she has done so.

No money for treatment: In December 2005, Chad Potter had what appeared to be a seizure while working at Largo Medical Center. He refused treatment and a drug test. Hospital records showed he had been removing large amounts of Demerol. He was fired, and the state intervention program was contacted.

Six months later, AMN Healthcare, a staffing agency, hired Potter and assigned him to Morton Plant Mease Health Care, where he was accused of diverting injectable hydromorphone, Demerol and morphine. He was fired.

He contacted the intervention program and reported the firing but said he didn't have the money for treatment. The program closed his file. In June 2006, he went to work at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg.

In September, he was suspended from Bayfront when he couldn't account for multiple doses of Demerol he had removed. The state nursing board referred him back to the intervention program.

His license is active.