2nd Nurse Charged With Taking Narcotics

A temporary-help agency nurse at SynergyHealth St. Joseph's Hospital in the town of Polk has been charged with possessing narcotic drugs without a prescription, which were found in her purse during a search on hospital grounds.
Christy Bauer, 36, of Greendale has been formally charged with two separate controlled substance possession charges, according to a criminal complaint filed in the matter, which carry a penal weight of up to three-and-one-half years.

This is is the second time in the last few months a nurse affiliated with the hospital faces felony drug charges.
Barbara Hansen, 45, of Random Lake was charged in February with six felony drug charges after she admitted taking morphine from hospital supplies to feed her addiction. She is expected to enter guilty pleas to some of those charges during an arraignment in May.
Hansen was terminated immediately after an investigation was completed, as was Bauer, said Janet Ford, a SynergyHealth spokeswoman.
In the Bauer case, according to the complaint, hospital officials became suspicious of Bauer after she allegedly checked out a large amount of hydromorphone, which is similar to morphine, and then not properly documenting when patients were given their doses.
An ensuing conversation be-tween Bauer and Mike Murphy, the head nursing official, indicated it was possible Bauer had "possibly taken seven (drug) vials," the complaint stated.
Bauer gave a Sheriff's Depart-ment investigator permission to search her vehicle parked on hospital grounds, according to the report, and a pill crusher, a small amount of Oxycodone and two straws containing trace amounts of another controlled substance were found in her purse.
Ford said the hospital has filed a formal complaint with the state Regulation and Licensing Board against the agency that Bauer was working for, and it was her understanding that that entity has begun an investigation.
The hospital’s pharmacy screens transactions from automated dispensing machines on a routine basis, according to a hospital official. The transactions are compared with electronic medication administration records for controlled substance accountability. This procedure led to the detection of some unusual activity by the external agency nurse on Dec. 5.
The external agency nurse was immediately relieved of her duties and law enforcement officials were notified. The nurse staffing agency was also notified immediately and the report filed with the Wisconsin Department of Regulation & Li-censing.
"We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior," said Michael Laird, president of St. Joseph’s Hospital. "The systems and pro-cesses we have in place were effective in detecting the unusual activity and we took immediate action to remove this agency nurse from duty."
A court date for Bauer has not been set.
This story appeared in the West Bend Daily News on April 6, 2007.