“Reckless Disregard”

CBS reported another nurse accused of diluting a nursing home patient’s prescribed morphine in 2021. Federal prosecutors indicted Nickole Butler who worked as a registered nurse at a skilled nursing facility in Illinois.

“Patients deserve to have confidence that they are receiving the legitimately prescribed medication and not a diluted substance,” Morris Pasqual, Acting U.S. Attorney for Chicago, said in a news release.  “Health care practitioners who illicitly tamper with prescription drugs will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

On May 16, 2021, she removed the liquid morphine prescribed to a patient, and replaced it with morphine diluted with another liquid, “with reckless disregard for the risk that another person would be placed in danger of bodily injury and under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to such risk,” according to the indictment.