Some blaming the pharmaceutical companies.
Tami Cleveland was terrified as she drove to her parents’ house in Veradale on a September evening in 2012.
Her stepmother, Beth, who suffered from debilitating migraines, hadn’t answered her call that morning. Cleveland hurried over after work to check on her, her anxiety growing when no one answered the door.
She let herself in and found Beth upstairs.
“She was sitting in her chair and her head was leaning against the headrest, and her mouth was open, and her eyes were open,” Cleveland said. “I went and shook her. She was cold to the touch.”
In her bathroom, Cleveland found a bottle labeled with a prescription for 300 hydrocodone pills, filled the day before. It was empty.
It’s a story that’s all too common across the United States, where more than 50,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016.
But Beth was different from most of the deceased. She was a registered nurse. A 53-year-old equipped with knowledge about the dangers of the powerful painkillers she was taking. And she was far from alone.
A Spokesman-Review analysis of Washington death records, health care provider licenses and Department of Health disciplinary records found at least 33 medical professionals in the state have died from opioid overdoses from 2010 to 2015, the most recent year that overdose death data is available.
Most of the deceased are not physicians. They’re nurses, pharmacy technicians and, in some cases, chemical dependency counselors.
None were disciplined by the Department of Health for suspected drug or alcohol abuse or diversion before their deaths, records show, though a Cowlitz County nurse died in 2014 before a pending investigation into his drug use could be completed. His death certificate listed nine drugs, more than any other professional on the list.[…]
Cleveland said her mother’s nursing license made it easier for her to get hydrocodone prescriptions, even as doctors were cracking down on the availability of powerful pain medication.
“She knew what to say and how to say it,” Cleveland said. “Knowing that she was a nurse, they didn’t question her at all.”
Beth’s prescribing nurse practitioner, Susan Bowen-Small, had her license suspended by the Department of Health in February 2014, almost a year and a half after Cleveland’s death. Three of her patients had died after taking painkillers she prescribed, according to the Department of Health, between January and March of 2013, after Beth was already dead.
The medical profession has long struggled with how best to handle providers struggling with drug addiction.
Though doctors, nurses and pharmacists are among the people best-equipped to see the consequences of drug addiction, they’re also susceptible to drug abuse thanks to an intersection of factors: high-stress jobs, odd hours and a belief that they know how to stay in control of the drugs they prescribe or administer routinely.
HT: American Mom