Somebody tampered with pain medications in the ICU at a Fort Lauderdale hospital, state says
A Pembroke Pines registered nurse’s repeated dipping into an Intensive Care Unit’s pain medication — and failed attempts to hide it — led to a state restriction on his license.
Joseph Gruen worked at Fort Lauderdale’s Kindred Hospital South Florida as a nursing supervisor on seven night shifts in January, according to Florida Department of Health documents. Gruen had no patients directly assigned to him and no reason to get into the cabinet with the drugs, but his fingerprint and access code were used to get into the ICU drug cabinet 31 times on those seven shifts.
“Mr. Gruen removed the tops of vials of Dilaudid, used a needle to remove Dilaudid from the vial and glued the lids back on,” the emergency restriction order (ERO) says.
A Jan. 22 standard check of the ICU drug cabinet found tampering on 12 vials of Dilaudid. A check of who went into the cabinet found “Gruen was the only employee that accessed the narcotics cabinet, without having a reason to do so. Mr. Gruen was also the only employee who did not log his access or withdrawal of narcotics.”
Kindred suspended Gruen during an investigation and they found seven more tampered-with vials, all of which were diluted.
After Gruen returned to work Feb. 1, he worked the night shift as nursing supervisor five times and got into the cabinet 16 times, still with no reason to do so, according to the report. Staff found the caps of 12 Dilaudid vials were glued on or didn’t twist off as they should.
“On March 4, Mr. Gruen met with Kindred staff and denied entering the narcotics cabinet, despite there being video footage of him being in the medication room at the time that his fingerprint and four-digit passcode were used to access the cabinet,” the ERO said.
Gruen, an RN since December 2003, resigned. Two days later, he called and apologized.
Asked if suspicions about him were correct, the ERO says Gruen answered, “Yes, but not exactly.”
Gruen’s restricted from being a nurse in any situation that would give him access to controlled substances.
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 2:36 PM.
